


I Was A Ghost Before You Came

by BigSciencyBrain



Category: Bourne (Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-15
Updated: 2013-06-14
Packaged: 2017-12-15 00:44:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 40,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/843337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BigSciencyBrain/pseuds/BigSciencyBrain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Unable to trust the CIA, Bourne and Landy go into hiding after he escapes from the training facility.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_In that book which is_  
 _My memory . . ._  
 _On the first page_  
 _That is the chapter when_  
 _I first met you_  
 _Appear the words . . ._  
 _Here begins a new life_

_\- Dante Alighieri_

The expression on Noah Vosen's face is almost worth the cataclysmically uncertain future Pamela Landy has now. Despite the reduction in weight, the backpack feels incredibly heavy with the secrets it carried; only her white-knuckle grip on the straps gives away her emotions.

"You'd better get yourself a good lawyer."

He makes a barely audible noise, like the gasping of a dying fish, and stares at her with a mixture of incredulity and terror. It's the look of a man watching the house of cards he built up around himself collapse down onto his corrupt, tragic fiefdom. There's anger too and the glint of hatred has her wondering if she's going to be shot in the back as she steps past him. Coward or not, Noah Vosen is still an armed CIA operative.

Every muscle in her back is drawn taut, waiting for the bullet, even after the door closes behind her. The heels of her shoes, sensible as they are, clap hard against the tile floor with each step she takes. Away from everything she hates, away from the career she's fought tooth and nail to build. Even knowing she's right doesn't make it easier to keep walking. Maybe she isn't going to be murdered before she can get out of the building; maybe she won't be coerced into penning a letter of resignation the next morning. But neither of those is a certainty. She doesn't know how deep the corruption goes and how far it has spread.

There are only two people she can trust now and one of them is a former assassin. That doesn't say much about her career choice.

The lobby has been locked down since Vosen arrived but, surprisingly, the tornado of guns and badges seems to have passed. None of his usual lackeys stayed behind to watch the front doors; all attention is directed inward to the core of the building where the secrets were kept.

Vosen will call her a traitor. Kramer might agree with him. All she can hope is that the Department of Justice sees it differently. That's the thought that keeps her moving through the lobby and out the door. Standing just beyond the police corridor is Tom Cronin and he becomes the lighthouse guiding her forward.

Her breath catches in her throat as a familiar face enters the building. Paz. She doesn't know his real name, age, or birthday, only the handle he'd been given when he was brought into the program. Like the name Jason Bourne or Gilberto de Piento, it's just a façade. Resisting the impulse to follow him, she forces herself to stay still. She holds up her identification at eye level so the men demanding to know who and why can see her clearance visually. None of them stop her. None of them know what she's done.

Yet.

"Pam? Pam?" Tom repeats, trying to get her attention.

"How many exits are there?" she asks, not even understanding where her racing mind is taking her.

"They've got them all covered."

"An exit that isn't an exit." She looks up, scanning the line of the building against the darkening sky.

"Pam," Tom says gently. "Not even him..."

She knows what he means. Not even Jason Bourne could escape a CIA facility meant to train men just like him. Not James Bond, not anyone. No human man is going to be walking away from this.

It's instinct that guides her. Intuition even. Maybe it's simply that she's been pouring over and over his file, searching for truth and bits of details only the lost memories inside his head would understand. The crowd of bystanders and security is thick all around the building, but they're focused on the doors. Tom follows a step behind her, silent and waiting.

She knows he wants to ask her what the hell they're doing; his questions are almost palpable. But he doesn't ask and he won't even if she's proven wrong. She tries not to imagine what's happening inside the building. The confrontation of identities, the struggle between Jason Bourne and David Webb. How would it feel to return to the place that made him what he was? Jason won the first battle. She's hoping David will win the last.

All the psychobabble she read in Conklin's report seems pressing and important now. Whatever Alex Conklin called it, it came down to the belief that the false personality, the Bourne identity, had finally taken root so deeply that there was nothing left. Had they done their job too well or not well enough? Conklin had been wrong – it was Jason who crumbled - and paid for his mistake with his life.

She doesn't know how much of either Jason or David will be left if he does survive.

Her breath is visible in the cold air as the sunlight begins to dim, the brightest glow having slipped below the city skyline long ago. Half aware and half lost in her thoughts, she keeps scanning over the area in search of a feeling she can't identify. He's found a way out of every trap they've set for him; he has to find a way out of this one.

_This is where it started for me. This is where it ends._

It's a surprise to realize how desperately she wants him to escape once more and how clearly she understands that the world needs Jason Bourne. Not as a mold or a prototype, but as a warning to all those who go where others fear to tread. She wants to be able to give the Justice Department something more tangible, more human, than a dossier to prod them out of their comfortably moderate stance. She wants them to see the actual human costs that don't appear on their balance sheets.

"Pam? Shouldn't we be contacting Director Kramer?" Tom asks. He's as nervous as she's ever seen him, glancing over his shoulder toward the hustle of sirens and NYPD blue. There will be an explanation in tomorrow's paper and every word of it will be a lie.

At this point, she doesn't dare trust anyone, even the Director of the CIA. She looks up again, squinting to see the roof's edge in the failing light. "If they were going to kill me, Vosen would have done it already."

"That doesn't mean he won't come after you later." He's genuinely concerned for her and she appreciates his unshakable loyalty. "Whistle blowers aren't taken lightly in this line of work, you know that."

They might even wait until the scandal blows over and she would only be an obituary, killed in an attempted robbery or innocuous accident. She may have cut the head off of the monster, but that doesn't mean there won't be three more sprouting up in its place. She moves further away from the front of the building; the whisper of the river is getting louder. "The American people deserve to know about Blackbriar, about men like Vosen."

"You're not hearing me." Tom places his hand gently on her arm. "Treadstone, Blackbriar. Programs like that don't disappear, they just change names. And once the next one starts, you're going to be enemy number one."

_They'll kill you for giving me this._

That jars her from her thoughts just enough to make her look away from the roof. There's a terrified sadness in Tom's eyes. The lump in her throat appears out of nowhere. It won't just be her they'll go after; they'll go after anyone who stood by her. Maybe she's choosing to give up a career, maybe she's risking her life for what she believes is right. Tom has a family.

"Vosen didn't see you, he only knows that I sent the file."

He stares at her for a moment before he smiles. "You know it's too late for that."

"There's no reason to drag you down with me, Tom."

"No one will believe that I wasn't involved."

"I'll swear under oath that you had nothing to do with the file or with Bourne." Her urgency stems from her shaken faith in the Agency, from her helplessness in standing outside the building waiting for a miracle. Faced with so much in her world that's wrong, she's been trying to put it right and she keeps failing.

A gunshot breaks off any further attempt to convince him. She searches blindly for the source of the sound and catches sight of a dark shape tumbling down from the roof of the building.

It has to be him.

She's running before she can think better of it and triangulating where he'll fall, where she'll be able to reach him the soonest. Her mind is spinning through the possibilities. The East River is fast and dangerous. How will he get out? Was he hit? Would he survive the ten-story fall into the water? It seems to take minutes rather than seconds for the sound of the splash to reach her ears.

Grabbing onto the safety barricade, she searches the choppy surface of the river for any sign of a swimmer; the reflected lights of the city flicker and wave without casting usable illumination. He has to be there, she has to find him.

The sense of urgency blossoms into desperation as she waits, straining to hear even the smallest sound that doesn't belong in the usual river noise. Hands tight on the barrier, she moves downstream in an attempt to follow the current, to follow where it would carry him. She forces the 'what ifs' out of her mind and focuses on the river. Tom is at her side, as always, searching the shadows and ripples of light just as fervently.

There.

It's faint and regular; the unmistakable sound of something moving through the water with hands and feet. Holding her breath to block out even that sound, she follows the splashing downstream. Closer and closer. There's seven vertical feet of treacherously slippery rock and steel barricade. Stripping off her scarf, she silently apologizes to her checking account for what she's about to do and wraps one end around her wrist. Below her, she can hear coughing and choking as a human being drags their body out of the frigid water. The other end of her scarf flutters down into the darkness. It just has to hold long enough for him to reach the barricade.

"David?" she calls into the darkness as loudly as she dares. Please be there.

Tom grabs onto the scarf with one hand and wraps his other arm around her waist. He mutters something about her sanity, but she can't hear him above the pounding of her heart.

The scarf pulls taut and is suddenly unbearably heavy. _Don't tear, don't tear._ She's braced against the barricade as firmly as she can, her shoulders straining against the pull. Tom is all that's standing between her and tumbling into the river. A hand, scarred and dripping heavy water droplets, grabs onto the top rung of the barricade. She's only seen him in person once but she knows the shape of him immediately. His left hand, wrapped tightly in her scarf, reaches up to grab on and he hauls himself up. Tom takes one arm and she takes the other, ignoring the icy cold of his wet clothes and skin, as they help him over.

"Are you injured?" she asks, still holding her breath.

Bourne coughs, spitting up water. "I'll live."

"I'll get the car." Tom gives her a meaningful look and then he's gone.

David is watching her with that measuring look of his, sizing her up and trying to decide if they're really on the same side. There's a part of him that will always be looking for the angle and always expecting the double cross. The building he escaped from is barely a block upstream from them and police lights are still flashing around the perimeter. Chaos bought them this much time; it's foolhardy to expect fate to offer any further respite.

"We need to keep moving," he says brusquely, already searching the area for a shadow to disappear into. Recognizing the backpack lying forgotten at her feet, he grabs it up and slings it over his shoulder with a telltale wince.

She nods, knowing the general direction of Tom's car and the scenic route to getting there. Tom knows her well enough to anticipate what move she'll make. His face is a mask but body language doesn't lie and he winces with every step he takes. Rather than offer help, she pulls her sidearm from her purse and holds it low in front of her as they start down a service access drive behind the nearest building. Until they drag her forcibly from her office, she is also an armed CIA operative.

There are shouting voices in the distance and the flashing police lights cast an eerie glow along the sides of the office buildings. She moves quickly, trusting him to keep up and knowing he will. It's only a matter of time before word travels down ten floors and the police begin to hunt for him. She heads away from the river, and the first place they'll look, as quickly as possible.

The familiar contour of Tom's silver sedan shines in relief against the dark pavement. He takes the corner a little too fast, seeing them only at the last possible moment. Tires squeal and the car stops almost on top of them.

"The tank's almost full," he says as he climbs out of the car. "Get as far away as you can." He's not telling her in words that he can't follow where she might have to go; if it comes down to that, if Vosen and Kramer have more friends in higher places. He has a wife and a child counting on him to come home.

"I'll find a way to contact you." That's all the goodbye she has time for. David is already climbing into the backseat, ducking low so he won't be seen. She slides behind the wheel and closes the door on her entire life. It will be impossible for her to go back until she knows how the scandal will fall out, until she sees with her own eyes that Blackbriar has truly fallen.

Once the flashing lights are far enough way that they can't be seen, she risks asking a question. "Do you need medical treatment?" Her question sounds sterile and clinical. _Like she read it in a book._

"Soon," he answers just as clinically. "The bullet needs to come out."

"Are you still bleeding?"

"Keep driving. We have to get out of the city." There's something in his voice that might be pain.

What they need is somewhere small and out of the way, someone who won't ask questions. "We'll find a motel along the way and get you taken care of."

"They'll be after you." It's a statement, devoid of emotion or concern.

The idea of living the kind of life that he's been living seems surreal and impossible. She's too set in her routine, in her world, to even imagine what it would mean to leave it all behind permanently. "Maybe. But someone has to make sure Vosen and Kramer don't get away with this."

Their conversation is swallowed up in silence. She has a feeling that he hasn't spoken much to anyone since Marie was killed in India. What would Abbott think if he knew that his small mistake brought down Blackbriar? The dominos falling away from that single action would have been incomprehensible to him. Now, as she turns the car north and the only safety she can think of, she wonders when and where those dominoes are going to stop.

**

Peering over the top rim of his bifocals, Senator Lawrence Carlisle's most fervent wish is to be back at his lodge in northern Maine, fishing. He did not want to be convening an emergency, midnight meeting of the Intelligence Oversight Committee and he, most particularly, did not want to be hearing that several top officials of the CIA were under suspicion of treason. Since he isn't in Maine and he isn't fishing, he starts at the top of the list of questions. "Do we know the depth of Landy's involvement in Blackbriar?"

"According to whom?" Former CIA Director Martin tosses his brief on the table dismissively. Returning to the private sector has been good for him, taking years off of his appearance and he seems to resent its intrusion in to his new life. "Vosen's denouncing Landy as a traitor, Kramer's saying he didn't know a thing; and if this document is to be believed, both of them are knee deep into Constitutional violations the likes of which this country hasn't seen."

"And Landy? Are we supposed to believe she knew nothing?" counters Fred Knowles, the chair of the emergency taskforce created by the President to investigate the breech. "What's her involvement with Jason Bourne? If she's the unfortunate bystander then where is she? "

"Why don't you ask Vosen where they dumped her body? Do you really think he let her walk out of the building? All we have is a single classified file, which is bad enough, but leaves who knows what else floating around out there. I doubt Vosen simply let her walk away with evidence that could burn him."

"There are witnesses-"

"Witnesses who work for Vosen." Martin shakes his head, the lines across his brow deepening. "Pam's smart. She'll know there's no one she can trust. Not until the Justice Department takes a stand on this. Publicly. If she's alive, she'll be watching the news."

"And Jason Bourne?"

"They'll start searching the river first thing tomorrow morning."

The conversation lulls as each of them take several moments to think over the possibilities. A single file gave them the bones of the Blackbriar project, but no flesh or skin to give it a complete face. To Senator Carlisle, sending the file to the Justice Department feels like Landy's desperate attempt to shine a light into the heart of the Agency's darkest secret but, until Landy herself appears, all he has is a feeling. The insinuations coming from Martin that Vosen might have had her killed are particularly unsettling. Then again, one file out of what could be hundreds of files detailing the workings of Blackbriar couldn't rule out Landy's own involvement in the covert organization.

Knowles finally breaks the silence. "We know that Landy communicated with Bourne, that she colluded with him. She gave him the diversion to break into the New York office, for god's sake. How do we know she wasn't planning this with him since Berlin?"

"I've listened to the audio from the call between Bourne and Landy. It's not damning but it doesn't help her case either," Martin began cautiously. "The entire operation in Berlin…we should have known then that Treadstone wasn't really gone, but we didn't see the pieces. Not until now."

Senator Carlisle nods acknowledgement, his own opinion of the connection between Bourne and Landy still forming. "Whether or not Landy leaked classified information to a rogue assassin isn't the question. Her behavior in this situation, while noble in its own right, is hardly the behavior that the Agency expects from its Deputy Directors and she will face repercussions for those actions. But our first and foremost question, however, is Blackbriar and the assassin program itself."

"We have to move on Vosen," Martin insists. "As soon as we do, she'll come in and tell us what really happened."

Knowles shakes his head in disagreement. "If she's just as dirty as Vosen, we're better to wait until we have leverage. And if we're going after anyone at the Deputy Director level, we'd better be damn sure we have all the facts."

"What are we doing to find Landy?" Senator Carlisle really wants to ask what Vosen is doing to find Landy, since he's the one who will be hung out to dry if Blackbriar goes public.

Martin answers after a quick glance at the briefing report. "Her assistant, Tom Cronin, reported his car missing two hours after the standoff at the New York office. He believes it may have been Landy who took the car. She would have had access to his keys."

"New York Highway Patrol has a description of the make and model as well as Landy herself. If she's driving, she won't get far." Knowles sounds remarkably happy about that fact.

Thinking over the options, Senator Carlisle leans back in his seat as he chooses his words carefully. "We'll wait. At least until we find the car and a lead on where Landy may have gone. I'll instruct the investigation to continue to probe, to ask questions. I want to know how much of the Agency is compromised by this. And how much of a scandal this is going to be. I won't be able to hold the wolves at bay for long."

"I'll arrange to have Vosen brought in for an official statement," Knowles offers.

"I want Ezra Kramer in this office as well," Senator Carlisle says sharply, ignoring the startled look on Knowles' face. He has no illusions about where Fred's loyalties really lie and why he's been placed on the committee. "His name is on this document, I want to know if he knew what he was signing."


	2. Chapter 2

There's blood on the backseat of the silver sedan, smeared out in a morbid inkblot over the smooth leather. Pamela Landy leaves it untouched. There's no point in a false trail if she doesn't give them a breadcrumb or two. The highway patrol will be looking for Tom Cronin's car; they'll simply find it a hundred miles in the wrong direction.

She hesitates for a moment before walking away, internally at war over what she believes and what she dares hope for. It could be days, even weeks, for the Justice Department to cut through the lies and stonewalling and it would be naïve to believe Vosen won't issue a kill order on her just as easily, and carelessly, as he issued the order on Nicky Parsons. It's an uncomfortable feeling, knowing firsthand how quickly he would justify her death as vital to national security. After all, she disseminated stolen Top Secret documents to an organization outside the Agency. She aided and abetted an Agency priority target. She committed treason. He would order her death and not lose a minute of sleep over it.

She wants to believe that sanity will prevail, but until Vosen is arrested live on CNN she's not going to take any chances.

It's only a quarter mile walk to the Allentown Bus Station, but once inside, it takes a few minutes for her hands and face to regain feeling, turned numb from the bitterly cold night outside. The contents of the locker have been there less than twenty-four hours, thrown together hastily somewhere between hours she spent pouring over David's file and the hours she spent pacing back and forth across her office waiting for dawn. An overstuffed duffle bag comes loose in her hands; she leaves the key in the locker door and hurries to the restroom. Inside is a dark brunette wig to cover her blonde hair and it's better than nothing. At five foot ten, she's never blended well into any crowd.

Not even Tom knew about this and she'd hoped it was a backup plan she wouldn't have to use. But after realizing what Blackbriar really was and how willing Vosen was to go after the Agency's own, this contingency plan might be the smartest decision she's made. The rest of the contents of the bag: cash, a prepaid cell phone, and minimal first aid supplies stay in the bag. There's no one to notice the change in hair color; it's after midnight; there's only one, easily avoidable security camera, and the heavyset woman behind the ticket counter is focused on her small television screen.

They'll need transportation; she didn't have time to plan that far ahead. But it can wait for now and walking back to the small motel gives her time to consider the options. There aren't many she's particularly happy with; Deputy Directors don't usually commit auto theft.

Desperate times.

She raps softly on the room door before unlocking it and slipping inside. It's not a surprise to see David standing in the corner shadows, her gun in his hands. She pretends that the sight isn't unnerving, that the chills running down her spine aren't because she's not sure which one she's dealing with: Jason or David.

"Let me take a look at your back." Pulling the first aid supplies out of the duffle bag first, she strips off her coat and wig as he settles down onto the bed.

The t-shirt he's wearing is still wet and clinging to his skin; he smells like the East River. She has to peal the cotton away from his skin to get a look at the wound, feeling for the bullet beneath torn skin. Blood spills out from the wound, turning her fingers a gruesome rust color. What is one more bullet to a man already riddled with holes?

"You're lucky," she tells him after deciding that the bullet is buried in muscle and probably hasn't done any permanent damage. "You have at least one cracked rib and it's going to bruise like hell. But I'm no doctor."

"Can you get it out?" he asks, trying to look over his shoulder at the wound.

"Hold still." Rummaging through the duffle bag, she digs out the bottle of painkillers she'd thrown in on a whim and hands it over. "They'll help a little."

Her first step is to press a gauze patch over his wound, soaking up the fresh bleeding caused by examining the wound. She tugs her hair back into a tightly knotted bun to keep it out of the way. The thinnest blade of her Swiss Army knife gets a good scrubbing and wipe down with an alcohol soaked cloth. More alcohol wipes and more gauze are laid out on what is hopefully a clean towel from the bathroom. Once her hands and arms are scrubbed clean with disinfectant, she takes a deep breath and braces herself for what's coming.

He meets her gaze unflinchingly. There's a sense of stubbornness in his expression, as though he doesn't want to trust her enough to help him. The moment passes and he's stoic again. He lies down on his stomach without prompting.

"Here." She slides her purse within his reach. "The strap is leather. I don't mind a few bite marks."

"Don't try to be gentle," he says before setting the strap between his teeth.

"No one's ever accused me of being gentle." It's a poor attempt at a joke and an even poorer attempt at settling her nerves.

Her hands shake just slightly as she pulls away the gauze. She prods as little as possible, just enough to be sure about the location. Blood spills out over his skin with each shift of her fingers. Armed with gauze in one hand to soak up the blood and the knife in the other, she kneels down on the bed beside him.

It's not a scalpel, but the blade is sharp enough to dig into skin and muscle. It's enough for her to catch the blunted end of the bullet and pry it up to the surface. She prays she's not doing more damage in the process. With it removed, she cleans out the wound as quickly as possible with the disinfectant solution; deliberately ignoring the muffled groans of pain. With another layer of gauze taped solidly to his skin, she can breathe normally again.

"We'll have to watch for infection."

There are deep teeth marks in the strap of her purse when he pulls it out of his mouth. Sweat glistens over his face and neck, but the look of determination is unchanged. "I need to keep moving."

She doesn't question or second-guess him; she's never been the maternal type. "We need a car. And you need a change of clothes. It's a five, maybe six, hour drive." She wraps up the bloody bits of gauze and her scarf, now stiff with blood and irreparable, to dispose of before they leave.

He looks wary, watching her every move. "I can't run with you. What you've done…I can't…"

"You've got the wrong idea," she stops him smoothly. "You're running with me, not the other way around. You're evidence, you're proof that Blackbriar existed." That doesn't get a response; he remains stoic and silent on the end of the bed. If she expected any feedback from him, she would have been disappointed, but she's already determined that he's not one to talk about his feelings.

"Do you know where you're going?" He sounds a little uneasy, as though he's on unfamiliar ground.

"It's out of the way and can't be connected to me unless Vosen can communicate with the dead. Once this blows over, you're on your own." She refrains from asking him to come back. The Agency needs him, but she's certain she already knows his answer to that request. "If I'm not indicted for treason, I'll do whatever I can to help you."

"Is that on the record?" he asks, the barest hint of humor showing through.

She almost tells him there is no record, not anymore, but she knows that's the point of his question. They're on the same level now, both running from the same people and the same Agency who betrayed them. She wishes she'd met Alex Conklin in the flesh, wishes that she'd been able to ask him the questions burning inside her. Whatever answers might be locked in David's head are beyond her reach.

There's something in the inhuman stillness of him that catches her attention, reminding her of what he is. It's then, in that moment with him sitting on the edge of the bed, that she truly realizes the magnitude of the scars over his arms and shoulders. This is the real thing, the final product of decades of unethical behavior modification. She's staring at a weapon the CIA spent thirty million dollars to create and, at the same time, she's staring at a human being who was stripped of all humanity.

It's terrifying and incredible in the same moment.

The reminder of the black backpack, still lurking in the shadows with its secrets tucked inside, pulls her away from the moment. She needs time to go through the files that she didn't have time to fax to the Justice Department. There will be questions she'll need to answer and those files contain the information she needs.

"Pam…Landy," he speaks softly and, strangely, hesitantly.

"Pam," she answers before he can finish the question. "What about you? What should I call you?" He looks down at his hands; she's surprised they're as steady as they are. The color in his face is fading and he's paler than she thinks he should be. "If Jason is more familiar-"

"No," he interrupts adamantly. "I'm not Jason Bourne. Not anymore."

It's as simple as a name and as complex as an identity. She's out of her league here, unsure of what he needs and what she can do to help. Should she reach out to him? Is that what he needs? Or would human contact simply drive him further into self-imposed isolation. She doesn't know how to reach out to him and he has no idea of how to reach out to anyone. That leaves them in the same motel room with the same enemies but very little they can do to help each other.

"We should go," she tells him because everything else feels inadequate.

It only takes seconds to pack up everything they brought with them, but more time to wipe the room clean of any traces of them. The dark wig slides back over her hair, making her scalp and neck itch. She tries to pay attention to every wince and grimace, monitoring his health the way she would monitor a field operation. He motions for her follow, only the tightness in his breathing giving away his injury. They find a rundown, and unlocked, Honda Civic at the far end of the parking lot.

"You know I can't condone this," she mutters, more as a reminder to herself than rebuking him.

"I can get it started, but you'll have to drive," he tells her as he climbs behind the wheel. "Give me the knife."

She looks away as he digs into the wall of the steering column, telling herself that she's keeping watch for any indication the owner is bearing down on them. The car engine sputters once, twice, and then stumbles its way to a rattling purr. Once he's moved to the passenger seat, she tosses the duffle bag into the backseat and gingerly gets behind the wheel, avoiding the bare wires inches above her legs. It looks so easy in the movies.

Once they're on their way, they're silent. She knows he's checking the mirrors and anticipating the worst. She wishes she could reassure him but, at the same time, she's grateful that she's not the one having to scan the road behind them. For the moment, she can focus on the road and trust that what makes him Jason will also keep them alive.

"Could you talk?" he asks, still sounding uncomfortable and awkward. "About anything. It doesn't matter."

"What do you mean?"

"I get these headaches," he pauses, looking back over his shoulder at a passing car. "Marie used to talk while we drove. It helped."

She can't help but ask what happened in the time between meeting him outside the building and watching him falling from the building. "Did you find what you were looking for?"

He looks away. "I remember coming in." The answer isn't a yes or a no.

"Anything before that? Home, family?" He shakes his head. If he's disappointed or afraid, it doesn't show on his face. Of course, he's had three years to cope with his lost past, perhaps it's better if those memories never return. "And after you became Jason Bourne? How much of that has come back to you?"

He shakes his head again, this time grimacing with either physical or mental pain. "I remember the people I killed. I can see their faces."

Uncomfortable with the obvious struggle he's in and noticing the sweat beading on his forehead, she drops the subject and turns her attention back to the road. There's at least five hours of driving ahead of her and she doesn't want it to be five hours of hell for either of them.

"I knew Abbott was hiding something from the beginning," she says, changing the subject. "I could see how terrified he was that you weren't dead. Vosen was the same way. At first, I thought it was just Blackbriar he was hiding. He wanted the source of the leak, but he wanted you dead even more than he wanted Daniels. That's what doesn't make sense to me. There's something more, I just can't put my finger on it."

He turns toward her, focusing on her intently. "Why did you join the CIA?"

He's asking her something that no one else has ever asked; what no one else has cared to know. Where she came from, how hard she'd fought to get to a Deputy Director position; none of that was information that anyone else needed or wanted to know. She glances over again and sees a new expression in his eyes. It means they're not as different as she thought, each of them swallowed up by the Agency to the point that nothing else is left. Seeing the comparison, hearing it in his voice, she tries again.

"When I was in high school, I tried out for cheerleading."

**

"Have they found Bourne's body?" Ezra Kramer asks tightly, angry and frustrated both with the turn of events and Vosen's incompetence. Assume the worst. They can't count Bourne out until they have his body in the morgue.

"Not yet. If he managed to survive, he may have had help escaping. Landy's assistant reported his car stolen late last night less than a block from the training facility and no one has seen or heard from Landy since yesterday." There's furtiveness in Vosen's voice, which is usually slick and plying; as though he's holding back details of what's happening. "Is there still a chance?"

Ezra Kramer swallows down his disgust at the pleading desperation in Vosen's voice. Noah Vosen is a coward; easily manipulated with the promise of power.

"Can we still pin this on Landy?"

He signed off on Blackbriar without looking at the details. He didn't, and still doesn't, want to know how they created Jason Bourne; he knows it involved pharmaceuticals ungoverned by the FDA and behavior modification techniques ungoverned by anyone at all. That's more than enough knowledge to burn him. The Blackbriar Operations file isn't enough to tie it to him unquestionably, but he always plans for the worst-case scenario. He has to find a way to keep the rest of the files Jason Bourne stole from Vosen's office from getting out.

"Ezra?" Vosen asks, still cowering.

"If she testifies, we're dead in the water and so is Blackbriar." Kramer already knows it will be years before another program can be restarted and that they're going to lose ground they can't afford to cede. What the suits in Washington will never understand is that programs like Blackbriar, and the sniveling worms that run them, are just as necessary as all the civil liberties Congress is so fond of mentioning during elections.

"My office will be crawling with oversight investigators in less than twenty four hours."

Always making excuses for everything is Vosen's trademark. Kramer resists the urge to simply hang up the phone right then, but since he has a limited window before every call he makes is recorded, he keeps the receiver against his ear. "Do what you have to do. I'll see what I can do to discredit Landy as the source."

He places the phone back into the cradle without waiting for a response and begins his own preparations. In order to survive the coming scandal, he has to isolate himself from both Vosen and Landy. There's always a way to shift the responsibility to someone else, he merely has to find the right buttons to push and the right opinions to sway. He has support in the Justice Department, men who understand the whys and the hows behind what really keeps the country safe. If he plays his cards right, he'll come out tarnished but intact.

Of course, his job would be easier if Vosen was competent enough to eliminate Landy on his own. Since he can't count on that, he'll have to make his own preparations. As long as she's out there, she's a loose end.

A loose end that could cost him everything he's accomplished.

Vosen will send an asset to track her down, the quick and linear method. It won't work, of course. Pamela Landy isn't an idiot and she'll anticipate anything Vosen might do. She'll go underground and she'll go deep.

Tapping the personnel file lying on his desk, he focuses intently on her name as if that alone had the power to dig up her secrets. Even someone as squeaky clean as Landy has to have a few skeletons he can exploit to turn the tide in his favor. All he has to do is muddy the waters and leave the Justice Department to sort it out. With the process bogged down in complicated hearings and oversight committee meetings, he can silently dismantle Blackbriar and rebuild once public attention is turned elsewhere.

He knows just the person for the job.

It's not a conversation he can have over the phone. He leaves an innocuous voicemail about a round of golf for the upcoming weekend and tells his assistant he's going out to get some fresh air. She should get some too, he says with a smile. She's the one fielding calls from the press; she looks close to overwhelmed already and it's barely dawn. He's taken great care to treat her well, to earn her loyalty.

Once out of the main building, he walks to the nearest park, purchasing up a cup of coffee along the way. To a casual observer, he's merely headed to work early. Twenty minutes later, he sees a man jogging toward him in dark gray sweat pants and hooded sweater. Coincidentally, the man stops to drink from his water bottle and takes the opportunity to stretch his calves against the park bench Kramer is sitting on. The man's face is shadowed and mostly hidden by the hood, his voice low and unremarkable.

"It's been a long time, Ez," the man says mildly.

"Too long. How's the family?"

"Doing well." The casual tone and lazy stretching are deceptive, hiding the fact that Mark Reynolds has already scanned the park several times in search of anyone who shouldn't be part of their conversation. "What can I do for you?"

"I've got a pest problem."

Reynolds nods before taking another long swallow from his water bottle. "You need a clean-up crew?"

"I've got a crew but their level of containment hasn't been what I would've liked."

"Pest control can be tricky that way. My team can handle the extermination if that's what you're looking for."

Kramer nods once, sipping at his coffee and savoring the rich flavor. "I'm going to need full sanitation. The works. And you might want to warn them there's a particularly nasty breed of cockroach in the mix. I'd say the creature was born to make things difficult. Might be a problem, might not." For a brief moment, piercing blue eyes are staring out of the shadowed hood and there's enough light for Kramer to see the distinctive scar cutting over the bridge of Reynolds' nose. He's never asked where the scar came from; it's one of the few things in this world that Ezra Kramer does not want to know.

Reynolds steps away from the bench, eyeing the jogging path. "Heard about that too. Might just take this job myself."

"I'll get you whatever access and equipment you need," Kramer offers. It's an unnecessary offer left unheeded, no answer but the sound of shoes striking pavement as Reynolds jogs away.

There is something to be said about the outfit Reynolds maintains out in the free market, away from the constraints of government. Men like Reynolds understand that they have a job to fill, an ancient and timeless job as natural to the human race as teacher or prison guard. This country needs men who are willing to cross those lines and get the real work done rather than cower behind vague ideals of justice and nobility. Those lofty ideals mean nothing when the threat comes from zealots lurking in innumerable crevices. Nobility isn't going to prevent further terrorist attacks against the United States.

Kramer takes a deep breath before getting back to his feet and starting the return trip to his office. This isn't about his career; it's about keeping the country safe against an amorphous, shifting enemy. If that means sacrificing a few chess pieces along the way, he's willing to make that call.


	3. Chapter 3

Despite the softness of his voice, Dr. Albert Hirsch's low drawl echoes with surprising weight. "This is the end."

"We can start over...rebuild," Vosen argues.

Hirsch turns away from the window, shaking his head slowly. "In a matter of hours, there will be people searching every inch of this office. You're lucky Jason stole your files."

The comment rubs salt into an already oozing wound. "They'll be after you too."

"I've given all I could to this program." He looks toward the window again, almost wistfully. "Jason Bourne was my greatest success. Methodical, resourceful. Such determination. None of the others made me as proud as he did."

Vosen grimaces at the nostalgic ramblings. None of this is going to stop the bleeding hearts on the oversight committee from dismantling Blackbriar just when they need it the most. The only hope he, and anyone else at the Agency has, of surviving the maelstrom of Jason Bourne was to fight back with every resource they have. If they couldn't stop one of their own, how could they expect to stop anyone else?

"Do you know what makes him different from the others?" Hirsch asks suddenly. "I didn't comprehend the truth until he was standing in front of me. All this time, I thought I made him what he was."

"Is there a point to all of this introspection?" Vosen asks, his irritation growing almost as rapidly as his panic over the impending subpoenas for his records. "Preferably one that will help me catch him."

"Stop looking for Jason Bourne."

"Who exactly should I be looking for?"

"I suggest you start looking for David Webb."

"Captain David Webb. Army. Delta force. I've read the file; everyone's read the goddamn file," Vosen snaps, frustrated by the psychological mumbo-jumbo. He wants data and facts that he can organize, that make sense.

"Exactly. If you want to find him, look for what isn't in the file."

"Assuming they won't be pulling his body out of the East River any moment now." As he says it, Vosen knows it's too much to ask for. Jason Bourne is the monster from a bad horror movie that keeps coming back, spawning sequel after sequel. Even if Hirsch is right, it doesn't help to tell him to look for a ghost. Captain Webb is officially dead, killed in action during an operation in Somalia more than a decade ago; his very existence purged upon entrance into the program. Then again, there might be another option, a much more tangible option. "If he's not dead then he climbed out of that river and disappeared. And I'm willing to bet that he didn't do it alone.

Hirsch finally turns to face him directly. "You think he had help? From whom?"

"Pamela Landy." Vosen allows himself a brief moment of victory. "And while the intimate details of David Webb's life were officially erased, there is nothing in Landy's life that isn't available to me. Friends, boyfriends, family. As far as I'm concerned, she's just as high a priority as Bourne and she'll be easier to find."

A rare, almost amused, smile appears on Hirsch's face. "Would that bright-eyed Athena should care to love you as once she cherished the mighty Ulysses."

It's the final straw for Vosen. He's not sure if meeting Jason Bourne face to face actually drove Albert Hirsch mad or if the man has been suffering from dementia for much longer than that. There's no point in asking for clarification of this latest cryptic comment. First, he's supposed to look for David Webb instead of Bourne even though they're the same person, then he's supposed to search out the hidden meaning in what sounds like bad Greek literature.

"If there's anything I can do to help you..." he trails off, looking at his office door expectantly. The Justice Department might be preparing to arrest him, but it's still his office and he'll be damned if he's going to spend his last hours listening to epic poetry.

The amused smile is still there but, thankfully, Hirsch starts toward the door. "Neither of us will be getting those stars now," are his parting words, no less cryptic than everything he'd said before.

Wills holds the door open, watching Hirsch leave with annoyance. "Sir, the satellite download to the archive is complete."

"Sever all access. Anything beyond level 4." He sees hesitation in Wills expression. "I doubt the Justice Department's goons will care than pulling us offline without the proper preparation could endanger hundreds of American lives. This way, we're cooperating and we're also protecting our citizens. That's our job."

Reassured, Wills nods his compliance. "And the asset?"

"He'll be on standby until this is over." It's an optimistic prediction that he doesn't truly believe, but he holds onto the hope that not everything they've worked for is going to be lost. "This country needs us, now more than ever. Not even the Justice Department can deny that. This is only a bump in the road."

Once Wills is gone, Vosen has one last task to perform before he begins the subtle dismantling of his own file system. Hirsch is right about one thing; the most damning documents walked out of his office with Bourne. All that's left now is damage control. The cell phone in his desk drawer will be destroyed immediately after he sends what might be his last target identification to the asset. He can't deny the feeling of vindication, however small, there is in hitting the send button. Pamela Landy can run all she wants, but regardless of what happens to him or Blackbriar once the investigators arrive, the asset will find her and he will complete the assignment.

She may have won the battle, but he's going to win the war.

**

David Webb has survived years of being an active CIA assassin and years of being hunted by the very agency that created him. Pamela Landy has to remind herself of those facts every five minutes to keep from wondering if he'll still be alive when she returns. If he managed to survive all of that, he can survive her bumbling surgical technique.

In her plans for going into hiding, it never occurred to her that she wouldn't be alone. As she's walking down an aisle in the supermarket, she realizes that she doesn't know what she's looking for. What was his favorite food? Did they program that into the assets as well? There is too much she doesn't know about Treadstone and Bourne's origins. Too many questions without hope of answers. She forces those thoughts away; she has to focus and get back to their hiding place as soon as possible.

There's one part of her life, and possibly the only part, that isn't available in any of her files and Vosen won't be able to find it in her townhouse or her credit card statements. For a brief three months between fall and spring semesters of her junior and senior year in college, she fell in love with Rick Saunders.

He wanted to join Doctors Without Borders and save the world. She was on the fast track to the Agency and a life of counter-intelligence. Even then she'd known there wouldn't be time for anything but her work. Married to the Constitution, Rick would tell her, teasing and serious at the same time. And once the summer was over, she'd gone back to Brown and he'd gone on to Harvard Medical.

Occasionally, a postcard from a faraway place would arrive in her mailbox. It's summer here, was all the postcards ever said. She didn't keep them; she didn't believe in sentimentality.

Years later, when there were databases of names and people at her fingertips, she discovered that he followed his dream and had half a dozen third world countries on his resume. And he still owned the hunting cabin in upstate New York where they'd whiled away lazy summer days so many years before. It was always closed for the winter, carefully maintained and prepared in anticipation of spring, and the closest neighbor was nearly twenty miles away.

The only person she ever told was her roommate at the time, a soft-spoken theology major named Marianne Harris. Ten years after they graduated and went their separate ways, Marianne lost her battle with breast cancer and Pam's secret went to the grave with her.

She's surprised that coming back is stirring up so many vivid memories. The past is something she doesn't dwell on, preferring to stay in the present and move forward.

Pushing away the memories crowding back in, she hurries to the checkout line. She pays in cash and is polite, but not polite enough to be remembered, to the teenager scanning the items. Canned food; a sweatshirt, plain t-shirts, and sweatpants she hopes will fit David, as well extra socks; deodorant, a toothbrush. She's never shopped for a man in her entire life and feels completely inadequate in her choices. An over the counter antiseptic cream and a bottle of painkillers aren't unusual in the midst the rest of her purchases. She hopes it will be enough.

What she really needs is a very strong cup of coffee.

Even the drive back to the cabin is distracted with visions of the past. It's not the first time she's thought about Rick, not even the first time that she's wondered if she made the right choice, but it's the first time she's been free to consider the possibility of new opportunities. The career she chose over everything else is on shaky ground and could be yanked away from her along with her freedom.

She's not as devastated as she thought she would be.

Perhaps discovering what was lurking beneath the surface and exploiting the people who truly believed in the Agency's mission softens the brunt of the blow. Then again, perhaps she's merely in denial. As she rounds the last corner and the cabin comes into view, she sees David's silhouette in the far right window. Maybe there will be a day in the future when he won't have to keep looking over his shoulder.

Her mind is heavily occupied with more ideas than she knows what to do with as she brings in the supplies and begins unloading the contents of the shopping bags onto the kitchen table. The air is much warmer than it was when she left and the faint crackle of a fire catches her attention.

"I found the wood," he says, leaning against the kitchen doorframe for support.

"You need to take it easy." She gathers together the clothing and other purchases meant for him. "Here. They didn't have much of a selection. And I bought more painkillers."

He takes the pile awkwardly. "You should get some rest. I'll keep watch. We'll take turns." He still sounds like a fish out of water, clumsily trying to integrate her into his survival without knowing where she fits.

But she's not going to argue against sleep. Now that the fear of being caught has begun to fade into the back of her mind, the exhaustion is creeping in. The rest of her purchases can wait to be organized or stowed away until she's slept off the hours of driving. Ceding to her own tired muscles, she leaves the disarray in the kitchen for a warm spot on the couch in front of the fireplace. Her scalp stops itching the moment she pulls off the wig. It's a necessary evil, but evil nonetheless.

"There's a bed," he says, still standing in the doorway.

"This will be fine for now." She nearly tells him that there are too many memories lurking in the cabin for her to face the bedroom. Once she's feeling less like the world is falling down around her, she'll be able to face all of those ghosts. And then, after she's exorcised her demons, she'll tackle his. There's still a stack of files and notes from Vosen's office waiting to be sifted through; if she's lucky, she'll discover who she can trust. The implications of whether or not Ezra Kramer is on that list are too daunting to consider without sleep.

A heavy wool blanket spread over her helps keep the chill at bay as she nestles into the couch. She tries closing her eyes but finds herself unable to keep her mind away from where he is and whether or not he is all right. Giving up, she opens her eyes again. He's sitting in the chair across from her, still too pale for her liking.

"How are you feeling?" she asks. It's awkward. She's not sure why she expected it to be anything else. They're strangers thrown together by unbelievable events, even if it feels as though she knows him almost as well as she knows Tom Cronin. "I want your honest assessment. If I need to hold up a pharmacy, I'd like to plan ahead." For a moment she thinks he might actually smile at the joke, but it's gone in the blink of an eye and replaced with the endless stillness that seems to emanate from him. She pushes up onto one elbow, watching him carefully. "I know I wasn't part of your plan, but you're stuck with me until I'm convinced that wound is going to heal."

"Thank you." He's looking down at his hands, his voice low and raspy enough that she's not sure she heard him correctly. "For the first time, I haven't had to think about where I was going and how I was going to get there. I've been running for so long..."

It's a veritable soliloquy for a man who redefines the strong and silent type and she finds herself strangely touched at his stumbling attempt to tell her something he probably didn't understand himself. There's a raw intimacy in his ramblings; she's witness to the hesitant steps of a man reclaiming his humanity piece by piece.

"You're welcome, David." She uses his name deliberately; hoping that if she says it enough, it will help him reclaim what was taken from him. He's moving away before she's finished the sentence, but strangely, she feels less anxious just seeing him mobile. She can close her eyes and breathe easier, believing he'll still be there when she wakes up.

**

Tending the fire only occupies so much of his time and he's convinced that, for now, they've eluded the people chasing him. He doesn't know what happened after he gave the backpack to Pamela Landy or how she'd anticipated this eventuality. He underestimated her; the odds are good that Vosen will underestimate her as well. And if this place truly can't be traced to her, then they'll be safe long enough for him to formulate a new plan.

Surging pain in his back makes his head spin, forcing him to stop and rest. The painkillers keep the edge off but no more. A single bullet wound isn't going to kill him and he could run if he had to, but he's relieved to have a chance to lick his wounds in peace. Keep moving, keep breathing, keep fighting. That's what they programmed into him, that's all he knows. He doesn't know how to be different.

_You volunteered._

He's given up hope that filling in any more of the pieces will do any good. His past is a time bomb, ready to destroy everyone around him. Marie, Nicky, Simon Ross. People died just for knowing his name.

At least he didn't have to dig the bullet out himself this time. No desperate fumbling, fingers slick with his own blood and choking on the bile rising in his throat, like that night in Moscow, reeling in pain and wanting more than anything to make it all end. The only reason he's alive is because of Treadstone. Everything he is, every breath he takes, is because of what they did to him.

How long can he keep living this way?

A sudden shiver reminds him that his clothes aren't quite dry and despite the heat from the fire, the damp is preventing him from staying warm. Gingerly, he scoops up the clothing Landy purchased and slips into the back bedroom as quietly as possible. The checkerboard patterned quilt is comfortable and homey, it's a quilt purchased to build a sanctuary.

He sheds the fabric that has almost become a second skin; injured muscle and skin in his back burns with each movement. The gauze bandage is stiff with dried blood. He leaves it as it is. Soft, warm clothing slides over shivering skin; he has to sit down to slowly inch the t-shirt over his head and shoulders. The bone-chilling cold that has been coiled at the pit of his stomach since he climbed out of the river begins to fade.

It's habit that drives him to check all of the windows once again, watching the early morning shadows drift over the snow. The winding back road leading to the cabin is almost obscured by drifting snow and from the look of the sky, there's more on the way. That part of the trip is blurred.

Beyond the cabin is thick forest that seems to contain only deer, birds, and possibly rabbits. There's another thin trail of smoke barely visible in the far distance, the only sign that they haven't escaped civilization completely. In his initial search of the cabin, he turned up fishing gear, which meant there was a stream or lake nearby. The overhead fixture doesn't respond when he tests one of the light switches; there must be a generator. Whoever owns the cabin has money to spare; it's visible in the elegant furniture and the high-end appliances.

It's perfect.

He ends his rounds in the living area where Landy is sleeping soundly on the couch and returns to the leather chair beside her. The room around them looks as though he's stepped into a magazine. Wood panel floors, thick sheepskin rugs, and even the artwork on the walls seem orchestrated to create a feeling of warmth and tradition.

A little voice that sounds like Marie echoes inside his head, _when did you become an interior designer?_

He's almost used to the voice in his head and the bitter reminder than she's not there. It might mean that he's finally lost his sanity along with his past, but he doesn't dwell on that possibility. His very existence is a mockery of all that's considered sane and normal. Shaking his head doesn't silence the voice or the feeling – instinct – that the entire room is staged to present a specific image.

_You're paranoid, Jason._

It's on the list of symptoms of all Treadstone agents. Anger, depression, paranoia. Like any other lab rat, he has unwanted and unanticipated side effects.

He's been outside normal society for so long that he doesn't recognize or understand it any longer. He recognizes interior design as something that people do, but doesn't know how to process his environment without seeing the deliberateness of the setting. All of his training tells him that something is wrong with the room; wrong in a way he doesn't understand. He almost wishes for Landy to wake up, to talk to him about anything that's part of a normal life in the normal world. He needs someone, anyone, to tell him that there's nothing wrong with the room or the art hanging on the walls. This is how normal people live. They worry about rugs and appliances and checkerboard quilts.

The only thing wrong with the room is _him_.

Uncomfortable in his surroundings, he leaves the living area and retreats to the bedroom toward the back of the cabin. He can lie, carefully, on his side and look out the bay windows at the clouds floating across the sky. Even lying still, he feels as though he's running. Without a target – who's planning the missions now? - he's adrift, cut loose from anchor and pushed out to sea. He doesn't know what to do.

Marie would know. She always knew him better than he knew himself.

His gaze drifts around the room, looking for anything to distract him from the pain in his back and the more painful memories in his head. Thick curtains frame out the bay window in dark green, a color that is picked up and scattered about the room in perfectly spaced intervals; bits of green in the soft quilt, more green in the picturesque forest scene painting and the thick rug. Another overstuffed leather armchair, a heavy oak trunk, and more dark wood floors gleaming even under a layer of dust. There's a painting of a lighthouse on the wall directly in front of him, almost obscured by a floor lamp. It's the only piece of the room that isn't perfectly straight and perfectly level.

Ignoring the pain, he eases off of the bed and reaches out to straighten the painting. It scratches against the wall, stays level for a moment, but falls back to its skewed position immediately after he lets go. He lifts it off of the wall in search of the reason for its failure to stay straight. Tucked into the frame behind the painting is a heavy paper envelope, its metal clasp the source of the scraping against the wall.

He replaces the painting on the wall, it sits perfectly now that the weight is evenly distributed, and returns to the bed with the envelope. The dark manila paper is worn and turning brittle with age. The contents shift and then come sliding out when he tips it to the side.

Photographs.

He recognizes the cabin in the background of several pictures, the trees thick with leaves and a cloudless sky above them. There's a young woman in all of them, smiling at the camera as though it possesses all the happiness in the world. Strangely compelled, he begins shuffling through the stack of photographs, envying and pitying the carefree innocence he sees in them. Bitter hunger he's tried so hard to avoid gnaws at him once again, making him ache for the way Marie would run her hands over his skin, the way she brought light into his life every time she smiled.

His hands stop on one picture in particular and he has to blink several times before he realizes why the woman looks so familiar. It's the expression on her face, the way she's looking at the camera with determination sharp enough to cut like a knife. Her hair is longer and pulled back into a ponytail, but the sharp cheekbones are unmistakable. He's looking at a picture of Pamela Landy. A man's Oxford shirt hangs loose over her thin frame, long bare legs stretching out over the couch. There's a book in her hands, thick and leather bound.

The tip of his index finger traces her outline absently, wondering how long ago the picture was taken and who took it. It's turning sepia with age; the dark circles and hard lines are conspicuously missing from her face. Whatever memory is captured here, it's important enough that it stayed a secret. He remembers the deep breath she took before unlocking the front door – the spare key is hidden in the porch lamp – and the way she closed her eyes, visibly steeling herself for whatever was inside.

In his wandering, he hasn't found any pictures of the mysterious owner. If they have a family or a spouse who mustn't know about past guests, there isn't any sign of them. In fact, he hasn't found any personal effects in the cabin at all. All weather clothing in the closets, men's coats, jackets, and boots, but no monogrammed towels, no family photos on the walls or mantle. The question of why the pictures were hidden and the intimacy of the photograph stop him from turning through the rest of the stack.

He keeps coming back to the same nagging feeling that the appearance of the cabin is entirely too perfect. Frustrated by his inability to dismiss the irrational worry and by his lack of understanding of what any sane person would consider normal, he carefully slides the photographs back into the envelope before they can raise more questions he has no business in asking.

There is no doubt that they'll come after her, like they came after Nicky and Simon Ross. Just for helping him, just for knowing his name. Or they'll come for him and she'll be collateral damage. The longer they stay together, the more likely it is that she'll meet the same fate as Marie.

Restless, he returns to the living area and the leather chair. She's lying on her side, curled in on herself like a child. Sleep softens the hardness of her features. Maybe it's his training, maybe he simply got used to having someone to watch over while Marie was with him. As long as he's watching, he can believe that nothing will happen to her.

He has to believe he can change what he is.


	4. Chapter 4

"Sir?" Wills leans into the conference room where Vosen has been exiled. "There's someone asking for you."

Vosen is too exhausted and strung thin to do more than look up over his coffee. "The entire Justice Department is parked in my office. You're going to have to be more specific."

"He's says he's not with the Justice Department."

"I can't discuss an ongoing investigation with reporters, you know that." He lifts the mug to his lips just as a tall, broad shouldered man with a very distinctive scar cutting across the left side of his face muscles past Wills.

"Good thing I'm not a reporter." One corner of the man's lips turns up into a smile that makes Vosen's blood turn cold.

"What are you doing here?" The last thing he wants is one of Kramer's hired guns anywhere near him, let alone in the same building with the investigative team from the Justice Department. He knows Mark Reynolds only by reputation and, other than the scar, very little of that is credible fact. He's a spook in the most literal sense of the word. There is no oversight, no protocol, and no Blackbriar umbrella for men like Reynolds.

"A mutual friend thought you might need some help."

"Everything is under control."

"That so," Reynolds muses, looking around the conference room as though he's casually wandering through a museum. "Have you found Bourne yet?"

"They're searching the river as we speak," Vosen answers tersely.

Reynolds chuckles softly; his hands are tucked into the pockets of his slacks, giving the russet trench coat he's wearing the appearance of a cape. "Little Davey Webb. Who knew? Goes to show you can't ever really know a man. What he's really made of, deep down. Ever read the works of Shan Yu?"

"Should I have?"

"He had some interesting ideas." He turns toward Vosen slowly, the chill inducing smile still firmly in place. "You've got a pest problem. I trust you have the means to fix it?"

"It will be taken care of." Vosen isn't sure what makes him angrier: Reynolds barging into his space without care or concern for how much damage his mere presence would do or the insinuation that Kramer doesn't believe Vosen can handle the situation. "If Bourne's body isn't in that river, we have a good idea of who he's with and the direction they're heading. We found the car this morning."

"Car?"

"Tom Cronin reported his vehicle stolen last night less than a block from the facility where Bourne was last seen. It was found abandoned this morning with Bourne's blood in the backseat." Vosen settles back into his chair, confident in their progress.

"Trail goes cold from there?"

"If we were looking for Bourne, yes. The man's a damn ghost when he wants to be. But a Deputy Director of the CIA has no secrets we can't find." The sardonic smile doesn't fade but Vosen has the distinct impression that Reynolds is suddenly more alert and more interested in what he has to say. "Pamela Landy didn't come in today. There's only one reason she would disappear and that is to protect Bourne." He deliberately omits the fact that she faxed the Blackbriar Operations manual to the Justice Department.

"A man's got to wonder why a Deputy Director would take such an interest in a man like Bourne." Neither his voice nor his expression gives away any thought process that might be going on inside his head. Except for an extremely eerie smile, his face is a mask of disinterest.

"Whatever her interest, if we find her, we find Bourne. And we will find her." Vosen sets down his mug with a forced attempt at finality. "Everything is under control."

"Would this version of under control depend on the same asset who let Bourne go last night?" Reynolds voice turns icy, "I asked around. You were the one who fired on Bourne. The only one."

Vosen has no answer to that. He didn't even know the asset was on the roof until afterward. "How do you-"

Reynolds interrupts with a dismissive shrug. "Training must be pretty sloppy around here. Your man lost Bourne how many times? And you're sure he'll be able to find his own ass, let alone a Deputy Director on the run."

"I have every faith in his abilities."

"Never had much use for faith."

Vosen isn't sure why he finds that statement so ominous. It may simply be that Reynolds' very presence makes the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. He hates lawlessness, hates the disrespect for authority that men like Reynolds always spread behind them. Men like him breed anarchy and chaos, selling anything and everything to the highest bidder. There's no loyalty, no respect; there's no control over a man who puts himself on the auction block. He nearly sighs with relief when Reynolds turns to leave.

"Tell your man I'll be tagging along on this field trip. I'd sure feel bad if he choked again and I wasn't there to do his job," Reynolds says over his shoulder.

The distaste in Wills' expression mirrors his own. Motioning for him to shut the door, Vosen takes a long sip of coffee. Hating the very thought of Reynolds stepping all over his operation, he mentally churns through the ways they could alert the asset to the unwanted shadow. "Did the investigators notice our guest?"

Wills shakes his head, glancing over his shoulder nervously. "Who was that, sir?"

"A rabid dog on a very long leash."

**

It's dark when Landy wakes, only the glow of embers casting pale illumination into the room. Shivering against the cold and feeling her way, she moves to the fireplace and pulls a handful of kindling from the basket on the hearth. Blowing gently, she coaxes a small flame from the coals. Fragile, flickering fire begins to eat into the narrow strips of wood. Once she's satisfied that it won't die out, she finds a medium size log to add.

With more light, she can see David in the chair. He's asleep; curled and folded awkwardly into the side of the chair. The sheen of sweat over his forehead and face, despite the chill in the air, is worrisome. Unexpected physical contact with sleeping assassins, reformed or not, is dangerous; and it's just as dangerous to startle a former Army Captain suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Risking a painful reaction, she moves to the chair and reaches out to touch his shoulder. "David? David, wake up."

He comes awake as though he's coming to life, with a sharp inhalation and his eyes suddenly wide open. His hand is clamped down on her wrist before she can pull back. He blinks several times, as though clearing away a veil to see who she is.

"How do you feel?" She watches him swallow hard, his brow furrowing as he struggles for words. "I need to take a look at your back. But first I need to get the generator going so I'll have enough light." When he moves to stand, she pushes him gently back into the chair and shakes her head. "Rest."

She leaves him there, ignoring the knot of concern forming at the pit of her stomach. Pulling on her coat and gloves, she ventures outside into the night, her breath peeling out in a cloud before her. The full moon turns the snow-covered landscape into an eerie picture, full of shadows and dark magic. She doesn't believe in magic anymore. There's a flashlight hanging on the wall beside the door. The utility shed is where she remembers it and the key to the padlock still hidden beneath a false panel.

It's as though she never left.

Once the door to the shed is open, however, the memories end. Instead of the dirt floor, she finds concrete. A new, high-powered generator waits for fuel in the far corner. She examines all of the markings and labels on the three tanker style drums along the wall before selecting one. Each of them has been fitted with a locking spigot to dispense gasoline and every one of them gleams. Carefully and deliberately, she pours out enough to fill a plastic container. Once that is full, she makes her way to the corner, eying the generator determinedly. If she's capable of planning overseas covert operations, she can certainly figure out a single piece of machinery.

_Remember Berlin?_

She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, forcing thoughts of that very ugly Deputy Director meeting out of her mind. It was hardly her fault that Conklin sent Bourne to kill Wombosi, Bourne got amnesia, and Abbott shot himself.

The smile is involuntary. If she didn't know better, she would've guessed that she'd woken up as a character in a spy novel.

With her courage and her grip on the container both readjusted, she approaches the generator and looks it over. The manufacturer must have anticipated exactly this occurrence because there are instructions embossed onto the casing of the machine itself. It's a few simple steps and she's pouring the gasoline into the creature made of steel and plastic. Once the container is empty, she crosses her fingers and turns it on. An overhead light comes awake above her and she exhales with relief.

The inside of the shed is the same and yet so much different than she remembers. The tools are new, but they're still laid out like a surgeon's instruments. Her fingers stray, reaching out to brush over a pair of heavy work gloves.

_Come with me, Pam._

_I want to see the world, Rick._

_Why not see it with me? We can change the world together._

Remembering her purpose for venturing out into the cold, she shakes away the long-forgotten conversation with Rick and hurries back through the snow to the cabin. The memories of long ago have her rattled; she's smart enough to admit it. But David is here, in the present, and he needs her.

She's stripping off her coat as she reaches for the light switch inside the door. Light floods the entry. David is still where she left him; the dark circles under his eyes look worse in the shadowed living area. She fights down the need to turn on every light in the cabin as she moves back to the fireplace to add another, larger log to the now healthy fire.

"David?"

The look he gives her speaks volumes. He's beyond tired, he's lost everything that meant anything to him, and he just wants to be left in the quiet – in the shadows – to fade away. He looks as fragile as the fire she coaxed to life, as broken as the kindling she tossed into the hearth. In that moment, that instant, she wishes she could unravel his past and undo everything, every step that led him to her.

His hand closes around hers as she pulls him to his feet, slipping her arms around him to prop him up. One step at a time, she half leads, half carries him to the bedroom and eases his collapse onto the bed. Once again, instinct guides her; the feelings, the intuition, everything she discarded long ago in exchange for fact and analysis. She presses her palm against his forehead. His skin feels like it's on fire. She helps him tug the t-shirt over his head and sets it aside. The gauze bandage on his back is dark with blood. He doesn't wince as she pulls the tape away. The skin around the wound is an angry, inflamed red.

"Lie down." She manages to keep her voice from shaking, just barely, and thinks only of what to do next as she retrieves the first aid supplies from the kitchen. Selecting a heavy ceramic bowl, she fills it with hot water before returning to the bedroom.

She washes away the dried blood, scrubbing as hard as she dares. Her hands are streaked with his blood, the water in the bowl darkening ominously. When she's satisfied that the wound is clean, she pats it dry and slathers on as much antiseptic cream as she can. Praying she's doing the right thing, or at least that she's not doing more damage, she tapes fresh gauze to his skin.

"Try not to move," she orders before leaving him to rest. She has to get away, has to wash the blood off of her hands.

It takes twenty minutes of scrubbing with scalding hot water and soap for her to be satisfied that her skin is clean. Once every trace of blood has been erased, she searches for a can opener. She may not be much of a nurse, but she can manage canned soup like a pro. Two cans of chicken noodle go into a heavy saucepan – _I owe you, Rick_ – and onto the range to heat. With the smell of soup in the air, she realizes how hungry she is. First things first, she pours a tall glass of water and returns to the bedroom.

Brushing his shoulder gently, she crouches down at the side of the bed so she's eye level with him. "You need to stay hydrated." He nods ever so slightly as she sets the glass down on the floor.

Retreating to the kitchen, the minutes crawl by at an agonizingly slow pace before she can ladle the soup into two bowls. There's a wooden chair against the wall in the bedroom that she turns into a makeshift table, setting the bowl and spoon within his reach. Setting her bowl down briefly, she opens the cedar chest at the foot of the bed and pulls out another heavy blanket to spread over him.

"You've been here before," he says softly, startling her.

"A long time ago."

Shifting his weight, he pushes himself into a sitting position and leans back against the carved wooden headboard. "I found pictures. Of you."

Following his gaze, she sees the envelope on the bed for the first time. Her heart is practically in her throat as she reaches for it. Inside the paper is a pile of slick photographs that bring a wave of memories crashing down around her. She has to stop, sinking down on the corner of the bed as she flips through them. In her determination to keep the past in its place, she never kept any of the mementos from that summer. Even the postcards were discarded after she read them a hundred times. At the very bottom of the pile is one awkwardly framed picture; Rick holding the camera at arm's length to get a picture of the two of them, their heads pressed together and both of them smiling. He's just as she remembers him, beautiful blue eyes and cropped brown hair that always seemed to have a mind of its own.

"His name was...is...Rick," she tells him absently, lost in her own thoughts. "I never saw him again after that summer. We went our separate ways and that was it. But I never forgot this place."

"You never told anyone." It's a statement rather than a question.

"One person. She died several years ago. Cancer." Her fingers are shaking and she has to force them to set the pictures aside. Being here wasn't supposed to bring up so many ghosts, so many unanswered questions. It wasn't supposed to make her life feel so empty. The happiness in those pictures is something she's never felt again but, without the tangible reminder, she hadn't felt the loss of it.

When he speaks again, his voice is rough and thick with emotion she doesn't see reflected in his face. "I burned it all. Her passport, pictures of us, everything. One picture is all I have left of her." It's his attempt to connect with her on a personal level, however tenuous and ill advised it may be.

Her stomach growls a reminder that there's a bowl of soup waiting to be eaten. She has to focus on the present, on the now, if she's going to get through this. This new world, without cell phones and staff meetings and all of her carefully planned routine, has her floundering for control and understanding. Her first impulse is to quantify, to define, and to fit Jason Bourne into a neatly defined box; a pursuit doomed to fail.

It's tempting to retreat to another room, away from the raw intensity that electrifies the air around him and the unexpected vulnerability she feels now that he knows. With a handful of photographs and a five-hour drive, he knows more about her than anyone else in her life.

"Try to get some sleep," she tells him awkwardly.

"You've never done this before. Taken care of someone." There's a hint of amusement in his voice.

"I had an aquarium once. The fish didn't last very long." She smiles, always preferring to face reality rather than run from it.

"Do you regret it?"

She's not sure if he's alluding to Rick, the death of her fish, or the suddenly glaring absence of family and romantic entanglements in her life. She answers him point blank, choosing not to shy away from a potentially painful topic. "Long hours, frequent travel, and what I do everyday isn't dinner conversation. I can't ask anyone else to make that kind of sacrifice. I can't put them in that position. And you may have guessed already that I'm not the easiest person to get along with."

"Marie wanted," he pauses to reach for his water. Moving forward, she gets to it first and presses it into his hand. "She wanted a family."

"But she knew you couldn't."

He nods slightly. "Sometimes, I could see it. How sad it made her."

"David." The carefully planned words stick in her throat. She wants to tell him that he doesn't have to keep talking. He doesn't have to pour out his secrets to her. But part of her can sense that he doesn't understand why he's telling her these things; he's simply compelled to tell someone what's been bottled up inside him since Marie died. She hesitates in asking, but more than anything wants to move the subject of conversation back to safer ground. "I've been meaning to ask. About Tangiers. About Nicky."

"She's alive." He looks years older than he is, watching her with a tense sadness. "They'll come after you like they came after her. You know they will. That's why you're here."

That reminds her of the remaining files tucked inside the backpack. The precious information she risked her life, and threw away a hard earned career for, still contained inside of them. "I hope, with the information you gave me, that I can find a way to end this for good. For both of us."

"Everything I find just makes it worse. I started looking for my name, for who I was. Then I...I wanted to know why. How it started. I thought it would make a difference."

"Did it?"

There's a hint of a smile as he takes another long drink from the water glass. "I chose this. I volunteered."

There's nothing she can tell him that will make any difference now. It's not simple, she knows that and he knows it as well. "So did I. So did Nicky. You had your reasons. Maybe they were the right reasons, maybe they weren't. What matters is what you do now."

"I won't go back," he says with unexpected force.

"You could do a lot of good. Have you considered that?"

"Not enough."

"Will it ever be enough?" She meets his gaze evenly, refusing to look away under the weight of it.

"What do you want from me?"

The question is sincere; she can hear the weary confusion in his voice. He doesn't understand why she pulled him out of the river, why she brought him to the safest place on earth that she could think of. She's not sure how to answer him. She doesn't know why she feels so compelled to reach out to him, to protect him. Looking away, her eyes fall on the envelope of photographs. They're a stark reminder of where she came from, of all her hopes and dreams, and of everything she passed up on her way to a Deputy Director office at the CIA. "I gave up everything else for the chance to serve my country. Because I thought I could make a difference, that I could help people. I thought I could save lives."

"Even mine?" His eyes are almost closed and she can see weariness in the lines of his face.

She manages a smile. "Especially yours."

Once she's sure the conversation is over, she leaves him to rest in solitude. Rubbing her arms against shivers that may or may not be from the cold, she adds another log to the fire before returning to the couch and blanket. In an attempt to pull her mind away from the past, she dumps out the rest of the files from David's backpack and begins to sort through them.

There has to be something – _a reason why_ \- she can use as a bargaining chip.


	5. Chapter 5

Spartan.

Somehow he knows that word is the key to everything. That it is why he's here, sitting alone in a seedy motel room with a gun in his hands.

The metal is cool to the touch, always cool. Running his fingertips down the barrel, he tries to dig through his memories for one that rings true. He's never thought about it before, never questioned anything inside his head. At the same time, that little voice – the one whispering on the roof that Bourne was telling the truth - is now telling him not to believe everything he thinks he knows.

Is Paz even his name?

Pieces of him feel real: the desire, the hunger, and the urgency to fight back against the world pushing down around him. When it's quiet, like it is now, a feeling of childlike helplessness wells up from deep inside; he doesn't know where it comes from, can't touch it or take it apart like his gun and figure out how the pieces work. Slippery as an eel, it slithers away into the back of his mind when he tries to focus on where it comes from, attempting to pinpoint details that might lend credence to his reality.

He sets the gun aside and tries to focus on the target instead of his internal misgivings. The phone is silent. No new orders or useful pieces of information have come to point him in any particular direction.

Pamela Landy.

He has more information about her than he's had about any other target, right down to the dish she orders most often from the Chinese take-out flyer posted on her refrigerator. Phone records, financial records; he has an entire disk of material that makes up her life. None of is useful. He can tell from the changing numbers in her bank account that she was preparing to run even before Bourne arrived in New York. She has no family or friends within driving distance of the deep cover office – _she hasn't called anyone outside of the CIA in months_ \- and the voice is telling him the car is a ruse. There is nothing useful in her day planner and her townhouse gave up no secrets, everything clean and modern and perfectly organized.

Her escape would be just as organized; she would have had everything she needed already prepared and waiting. The car was found walking distance from a bus station. It would have been easy to walk in, open a locker, and leave without being noticed.

He opens his phone and pulls up her picture. Tall, blonde, commanding; she'll stand out in a crowd wherever she goes and she's smart enough to know that. Is Bourne with her? That's the question lurking in the back of his mind. He wants to know if Jason Bourne also has memories of a past that may or may not be real. He wants to ask questions.

_Look at us. Look at what they make you give._

It's unshakable; the feeling that what Bourne was trying to tell him is vitally important. But he doesn't know what it means and that keeps his mind turning the words over and over, trying to give them meaning.

_Will you commit yourself to this program?_

He knows that voice, knows the face that comes with it, but they feel like words from a dream rather than his own life. It wasn't as simple as signing his name on a dotted line, but the details are blurred and fade away when he reaches for them. Does Bourne have those memories as well? If he can determine what memories they have in common, if any, then he'll know what it all means.

The creak of a loose floorboard outside his door is nearly inaudible but it's the reason he chose that particular room.

He has time to reach for his gun before the door splinters and a bullet hits him in the chest like a sledgehammer. Gasping, the breath rushing from his lungs as he falls back, he presses his hand against the wound as hard as he can to stop the bleeding. The air in his lungs feels heavy as lead. Too much pain. He tries to force it back, to keep his mind clear in spite of the burning in his chest. A silhouette of a man moves through the doorway, edges blurred by the weak, yellow light from the parking lot.

A familiar face – he remembers that scar – fills his blurred vision. "Sarge?"

"The war's over, Pazinski," the man standing over him says. The gun multiplies, bouncing back and forth like an echo as he spins the silencer off of the barrel. The disk containing information about Landy disappears into the man's coat pocket along with his cell phone.

He can taste blood in the back of his throat, blinking repeatedly in an attempt to clear his vision. Jacob. His name is Jacob Pazinski. It's not the name on his passport but he knows it's his, he knows it's real. The door shuts quietly. That was always the Sergeant's way, in and out like a shadow. Taking shallow breaths, he feels for the motel phone on the end table, lifting the receiver and dialing blindly.

A tiny voice comes out of the speaker. "Nine one one, what's your emergency?"

**

_"Captain Webb."_

_"Yes, sir." He notices the scar first and then the way the man in front of him wears the scar like a Medal of Honor; it's a mark, a war trophy, carried in plain view. One of the files in the man's hands folds shut. He sees his name on one of them and recognizes his personnel file. The second document is labeled only with the word TREADSTONE._

_The man motions for him to follow. "You have an impressive record. Resourceful, courageous under fire."_

_They walk beyond the grassy area where the men are training. There's a hill at the edge of the base where the ground falls off and a valley view spreads out around them. He keeps stiff, at attention, waiting for the unusual meeting to be explained. His curiosity is percolating; he's learned to keep it in check._

_"At ease, soldier," the man finally tells him, breathing in deeply as he looks out over the view. "You have another tour coming up."_

_He hesitates. "Yes, sir."_

_"The enemy's changed, Captain. The whole world has changed," his tone softens, becoming reflective. "There are nuclear warheads for sale to the highest bidder. Tanks and assault rifles on the black market. We can no more stop a suicide bomber with a missile than we can stop a bomb with an umbrella. It's only a matter of time before lives…American lives…are lost."_

_All of this he knows too well: the threat of proliferation, the reality of terrorism. "I understand, sir."_

_"Do you?" the man with the scar asks. Whether or not the question itself is unsettling or if it's merely the man's crooked smile, he doesn't know. "Do you know what kind of weapon it takes to deal with that kind of enemy?"_

_Again, he hesitates. If there is a point to the questioning, it will be explained soon enough. He makes note of the lack of markings on the man's uniform, nothing to give away his rank or affiliation. Earlier, however, he noticed deference – almost unease - in the way his superiors addressed the man with the scar._

_"The kind of weapon you could be, Captain Webb. You fit the profile. You're everything we're looking for."_

_In the background, he can hear a bird chirping from inside the cover of a nearby tree and further off, the sound of the men training. "What is Treadstone, sir?"_

_"The best chance our country has to protect its citizens." The man closes the file, preventing him from seeing any of its contents and making it that much more tantalizing. "Are you interested?"_

_He doesn't hesitate this time. "Yes, sir."_

The burning pain in his back dissolves the dream – _not a dream_ \- and wakes him just as quickly as a slap of ice water against his face. His head is pounding, as it always does when bits of the past claw their way forward into his present. Throbbing, insistent, and damning, he forces himself to think through the fog of pain and reach for the glass of water.

His fingers, heavy and clumsy from sleep and fatigue, close too soon and send the glass tumbling off of the chair. The crack of breaking glass booms like thunder in his oversensitive ears.

From the pale light cast by the lamp in the living area, he sees that it wasn't loud enough to wake Pamela. She's fallen asleep in the midst of reading through Vosen's files. Reluctant to wake her, he rolls onto his side and eases his aching body off of the bed. The wood floor is cold and smooth against his skin.

One piece at a time, he collects the shards of glass and places them carefully back onto the chair. Skimming his hand over the floor, he makes sure he's found all of the pieces. By then, he's exhausted – _tired of living_ – and has to rest. It's easier to sink down onto his side and lay his head against the floor, soaking up the welcome cool from the wood and the spilled water.

_You fit the profile._

He doesn't know what that means, what profile it was that damned him. Young and gullible perhaps, willing to believe the promises that he would be saving American lives. These new memories aren't bringing clarity. No longer David, no longer Jason; they've left him with no identity to call his own.

_Who am I?_

The flames cast long flickering shadows into the bedroom, each one a shadow to jump at, a potential enemy lurking beyond his sight. _There's no one there, there's no one there_.

Wind rustles outside, adding its voice to the night. For an instant, it reminds him of Goa and the nights without dreams, the moments of peace in a life of blood and violence. If he moves the spell will be broken and he'll have to remember that there is nothing for him outside these walls but death; that it won't be over until he can rip Jason Bourne completely out of his skull. That Marie is still gone.

Every inch of his body aches. From the car crash, from the fall, from the bullet Pamela dug out of his back. There isn't a single bit of him that doesn't hurt to move or touch and it's getting harder to force the pain into the background, but it distracts him from the emptiness inside and he considers that an acceptable trade. He'd rather feel the bruises and cracked ribs than the broken heart.

_Keep moving._

He's been still long enough. Palms flat against the floor, pushing up despite the internal protests of torn and bruised flesh; he's shaking as he gets to his knees and then, ever so slowly, to his feet. The sweat on his skin cools him quickly. As quietly as possible, he moves through the living area and stokes the fire, adding another log to take the chill out of the air. Landy is curled up on the couch once again, shivering unconsciously against the cold. He slips the operations brief from her hands and awkwardly pulls the blanket up over her shoulders.

Easing his battered body down into the leather chair once again, he flips through the pages, scanning over them in the dim light. Exactly what he's looking for, he doesn't know; a memory, a name, an explanation.

"You can't go back," Landy says softly, surprising him. She smiles just slightly, eyes still partly closed with sleep. "David Webb is dead, officially; killed in action during a covert operation in Africa. They erased who you were and gave you a new identity. One that couldn't be traced back to them."

"Was there a Jason Bourne?" he asks, wondering if they traded him in for a newer model or if they'd merely fabricated the assassin they needed. What about the man he killed? Did he take his place?

"I don't know. There's a reference to a supplier. It's vague." Keeping the blanket snug around her shoulders, she pushes up into a sitting position and reaches for another file. "At first I thought Daniels recruited you, but he was just the contact point inside Treadstone. Someone else hand picked the assets and brought them to Daniels. Someone outside the Agency, with extensive military contacts."

"I remember a face. Not a name. I don't think I ever knew his name. I fit the profile." The words blur on the page, fading in and out with the flickering of memories. "Ross said it all started with me. I was square one. What does that mean?"

"You were what made them realize it would work," she answers bluntly. "You weren't their first attempt, just their first success. It's all in here. Hirsch documented everything. You might not agree, but compared to what happened to the men before you, you're the lucky one."

"Did I…do I have a family?" It seems insane to ask. Even if he did, he's long dead to anyone who might want him back.

"Your file lists parents and one sibling, a sister. But there're no details." The look on her face doesn't give him hope for any happy reunions in his future. "They would have had to make sure no one could ever identify you. I'm sorry."

"You think they killed my family?"

"I think it's a distinct possibility. Vosen and Kramer are the kind of men who hate loose ends and who have a great deal to hide." In the warm glow from the fireplace, she looks tired and terribly sad. "This wasn't just a dirty section chief; this was years of research and hundreds of millions of dollars. This was approval from the highest levels of government."

"You have proof?"

She nods, but that only seems to deepen her sadness. "Enough to send Vosen and Kramer away for a very long time. And enough to be signing my own death warrant when I go forward."

"Then run."

"The American people have a right to know what they've done. What they did to you." Her tone is firm and there's no trace of fear in her eyes, only sadness that it has come to this. "There's no cell phone reception out here. First thing tomorrow, I'll drive into town and find out what's going on. If I can get what I know to the Justice Department, that'll be enough. Once I make that call, I won't be able to come back here without putting you at risk."

"They'll kill you before you can testify."

"Then I've served my country."

There's a trace of bitter humor in her voice that he doesn't understand, but he doesn't need to. The world is simple. His world is simple. He envies her faith in her country and her conviction in the ideals it was founded on. The truth, the reality, is the blood on his hands and the scars on his back. Everything else is idle politics and lies. Even the thought of being part of that system turns his stomach and darkens his vision with disgust and hatred. The system did this to him. They did this to him. They took Marie away.

"How are you feeling?" Her question stops his downward spiral into angry despair.

He doesn't tell her about the burning pain in his back or the aching everywhere else. It's only pain; they're only bruises and a bullet wound. That part of him will heal. The rest of him will be shattered and broken for the remainder of his life.

The lamp beside her blinks; a question mark to punctuate her question and his inability to answer her. Pushing aside the blanket, she swings her legs off of the couch. "I'll be back. If you're feeling up to it, why don't you take a shower? Towels are in the cabinet next to the sink." She tugs on her shoes and then gathers up the remaining stack of files, placing them on the end table beside him. "You're welcome to look through these if you think it will help. It might bring something back."

Once she's gone, he eyes the files distrustfully. Pandora's box has already been opened; he sees no reason to shake its contents out onto the floor. He takes her suggestion instead, leaving the comfort of the fire and leather chair behind. Every motion is stiff and painful, reinforcing the nearly overwhelming desire to hide. It takes conscious effort to remind himself that he is hidden. Swallowed up by forest and snow, he's hidden away in the depths of someone else's past, someone else's memories.

No amount of convincing eases the tension between his shoulder blades.

With stone tile, marble countertops, and a spacious walk-in shower, the bathroom is the same luxurious perfection that feels too carefully planned to be anything but a trap. He ignores the hissing paranoid curling up his spine like a snake, pushing it as deep as he can into the darkness it came from.

_Focus on the target, Soldier._

He jerks involuntarily as the voice echoes in his head, the ghost of Conklin returning to torment him. He forces that away too, refusing to acknowledge it. Reaching an arm in, he swivels the shower handle to On. The sound of pounding water makes it a little easier to ignore the ghosts. He strips away his clothing quickly, focusing completely on the action of push and pull against the fabric.

The gauze on his back is once again stuck to his skin with dried blood; he leaves it. Heat and steam envelope him as he steps into the shower, stinging his skin and lungs with each inhalation. Reaching out, palms flat against the tile walls, he steadies himself against the bombardment of water and lowers his head under the stream completely. All he can hear is water rushing past his ears and, briefly, he can pretend the world has faded away. Hot water washes away the dirt and blood, the smell of the East River, but never touches the darkness under his skin.

_"He's all yours, Daniels." The man with the scar is there again, smiling a crooked smile that holds no amusement or humor. Neil Daniels stands beside him, lips moving but no sound coming out._

_He's in a lobby, glass doors behind him. 415 East 71st. He can see the black Suburban that brought him here just beyond the entrance._

_"Good luck, Captain." In that moment, he sees something in the scarred face, some hint of softness and humanity that wasn't there before. Regret; as though the Pied Piper was suddenly rethinking his vengeance._

_He doesn't understand; he's serving his country._

_Daniels leads him down the hallway, looking back over his shoulder. He can't hear the words._

_Water._

_His head is covered with black cloth; he can hear the water running. He can't breathe._

Searing pain in his nose and throat – _he's drowning_ \- breaks through the nightmare. He's choking on real water this time, grasping for anything solid to claw his way out and gulping down air. Hands pull at his shoulders. _Keep fighting._ Shoving against his captor, pain lancing through his back, he manages to twist around and lash out. He has to make it stop. His hands close around their neck, gripping tight.

Cold metal hits the side of his head with a brutal crack, splitting open the skin at his temple and momentarily stunning him. His vision is blurred but he can see the familiar shape of a gun pointed right between his eyes. Tendrils of long, blonde hair are wrapping around his hands and wrists. _Pamela_. He pulls his hands away and stares helplessly down at his fingers. They're trembling violently, whether from the memories or from what he's just done, he doesn't know.

Her eyes are wide; the spray of water from the shower creates false tears on her cheeks. The gun is still pointed at him as she waits for him to make the next move.

"Please," he manages to choke out. His whole world is spinning out of control and has been ever since they killed Marie. The memories come unbidden now, hitting him and tearing him into pieces without warning. He can't stop them, he can't push them away. Water hits his back, digging into the bruises and bullet wound like scorpion stingers, but he can't seem to move at all.

Slowly, she lowers the gun to her side. Her hair and clothes are soaked through; blood tinged water dripping down her chin from a cut on her lower lip. The expression on her face is defiant, almost furious. Very slowly, as though trying not to startle him, she reaches down to pick up the bar of soap sitting innocuously by her foot.

"Here," she tells him. Her voice trembles just slightly and her knuckles are white. "I'll be here…if you need anything."

His hand moves to take the bar of soap, the only indication that he hasn't frozen into stone. Closing his eyes tightly, he turns his face back into the stream of water and scrubs at his skin in a futile effort to shed the blood stained husk of Jason Bourne. He'll never be clean enough, never be able to wash it away. If he ever doubted it, he's now convinced that he has to remain far away from anyone who might be stupid enough to want to help him.

Once the water begins to chill, he sets the soap aside and shuts it off. He dreads leaving the cocoon of steam and heat, unable to loose his tongue from its dead anchor against his teeth. Words don't change anything.

She's standing beside the vanity; her shoulders back and chin set with determination. He takes the towel she's offering, suddenly acutely aware of his nakedness. She's changed her clothes, now dressed in a too large flannel shirt and a pair of jeans. Her long blonde hair has curl to it, subtle and gentle, that he hasn't seen before. It seems out of place with her hard lines and sharp edges. Barefoot, she stands eye to eye with him.

"Let me take a look at your back." She motions for him to turn around, her voice crisp and authoritative. It's the tone she used with the field officer in Naples.

He grips the marble edge of the vanity countertop, resting his weight on his palms and bracing himself for fresh pain. Tape peels from his skin, he can feel it give way inch by inch, and her fingers are cool when she touches his back. The antiseptic cream stings, just slightly, before fading into a dull throbbing. Her fingers slide down his arm, tugging gently to signal that she's finished. He turns to the side, trying to look anywhere but at the blood on her lower lip.

"How's your head?"

He winces as she dabs a piece of gauze against the cut on his left temple. "I could've killed you."

"Easily," she answers calmly.

"Why didn't you shoot?"

Stabbing pain digs into his temple as she covers the cut with cream and presses gauze against the wound. "Lethal action is always a last resort."

Catching her wrist – _he could break it with one twist_ – he stops her. "This isn't a mission or an operation you can control. I'm dangerous. To you. To everyone."

She surprises him by smiling; the sad, soft smile that's becoming achingly familiar. Her cheeks and face are flushed, pale skin turning pink. "Contrary to popular belief, I don't shower with a firearm unless I might need it." When he doesn't respond, she continues. "You weren't trying to kill me, you were trying to kill whoever put you through hell. What they did to you isn't your fault."

"It's not worth it. Everything you've done-"

"I wouldn't be here if I didn't think you were worth it," she retorts hotly, the color in her cheeks darkening.

"Damn it, Marie." He blinks, realizing what he said.

Awkward silence is broken only the occasional drip and splash from the shower. Apologies are useless and he's unbearably tired of trying to make amends with the dead. _I'm sorry,_ doesn't mean anything coming from an assassin. _I'm lost without her_ , doesn't explain why he can't bring himself to let go of her wrist.

Failing to find the right words, he reaches up to tentatively wipe away a trickle of blood from her lip. His fingertips drop to her throat and the first hint of bruising. _His hands did that._ She swallows; he watches the muscles in her throat move, tracing the line of her neck. She's fragile in his hands and he can feel her heart beating fast against the heel of his palm. His joints feel rusted into position as he leans forward incrementally. For all her edges, her sharpness, her skin is soft against his. The enticement of that warmth – _life_ – pulls him closer. The raw hunger for contact is tearing him apart.

Her fingertips brush against his cheek; eyes wide open, she's searching his face for something. He has no answers or reasons to give her; he simply doesn't have the energy to do the right thing and let go of her. He's collapsing under the weight of his very existence and wants more than anything to banish the whispering voice in his head.

"All I have are ghosts," he whispers, abandoning the effort of trying to put the words together and give them sense. Heat from her skin soaks into his hands, intensifying the emptiness inside and making it impossible to pull away. She's real, warm, and solid. _Alive._

Ever so gently, her lips press against his. In that instant of contact, the voice in his head finally ceases its whispering. He slides his hand to the back of her neck, winding his fingers into her hair and pulling her tight against him.

She kisses without hesitation, despite the blood he can taste on her tongue. He's waiting for her to say something – _tell me to stop, tell me to stop_ – or for her to remember what he is. Instead, she's pulling him deeper into the haze of heat and skin. The aching in his muscles fades just enough to remove the razor edge of pain, her hands pushing it away as they travel across his body.

He just wants to forget.


	6. Chapter 6

"Tom?" Carla looks worried, even terrified, and her voice has permanently settled into a higher octave. "There's a man here to see you. He's in the living room."

Tom Cronin glances at his four-year-old daughter, held tight in Carla's arms and obviously aware that something is very wrong with her mother. "Why don't you take Mary upstairs? I'm sure this won't take long." He kisses Mary's forehead and gives Carla's shoulder what he hopes is a comforting squeeze.

He can't tell her it will be all right; Justice Department investigators and internal Agency agents have been in and out of their home enough in the past twenty-four hours that she'll know he's lying. His security clearance stripped, firearm taken away; and every one of the Internal Affairs goons looks at him as though he's committed treason. He follows a step behind his wife and daughter to the foot of the stairs, watching them retreat to the second floor. Once he's sure they're out of earshot, he heads into the living room.

"Can I help..." he tries to sound welcoming but his voice falters when he sees the man staring intently at the wall of family photos. He's tall, broad shouldered, and smiling; but despite the Agency standard trench coat, Tom is immediately sure he's not part of the Agency. The scar across his face is unusual enough to make his face unforgettable. If he were to guess, he would put the man in his fifties, but he moves with the fluidity of a much younger man.

"Agent Cronin."

Extending his hand, he forces a smile. "And you are?"

"Curious." His head tips to the side as he leans forward to shake hands. "I heard they found your car down near Allentown yesterday morning. That's a relief."

"I won't be getting it back any time soon, but yes, I'm glad they found it."

The man with no name reaches into his coat, pulling out a thick manila folder. He doesn't open it, simply taps the edge against his palm as he wanders the room, appearing to be evaluating the decor. "You and Pam have worked together a long time."

"Since I joined the Agency." Bristling against the casual use of Pam's name, he decides against offering the stranger a seat, but sits down on the sofa and tries to relax. "I've been through all of this with the investigators from the Justice Department."

"I'm not with the Justice Department."

"And Internal Affairs."

He glances over his shoulder with an infuriating smile. "Not with them either."

"So you're what? NSA? Homeland Security?" Tom waits a beat for an answer but doesn't expect one.

The man pauses to sniff at the vase of fresh flowers Carla brought home before turning around, completely ignoring the deliberately pointed question. "You two probably spent a lot of time together over the years. Ever see each other outside of work? Socially."

"What's that supposed to mean?" His temper is worn thin from the stress of never-ending questions. He's given up trying to convince anyone that Pam isn't a traitor and the tightrope walk of not giving them any reason to arrest him is getting more difficult by the hour.

"Just trying to get a feel for the players."

"Let me save you the trouble, I don't know where she is. That's what I told the Justice Department and the Agency. They've tapped my phones, gone through my mail; I have a twenty-four hour detail parked outside my front door. Feel free to ask them."

Unexpectedly, the man moves to take a seat across from Tom, still tapping the file into his palm as steady as a metronome. "Here's the part I don't understand. Pamela Landy spends twenty years of her life building her career. She's driven, ambitious, smart as they come. No family, no pets, no life outside of work. Explain to me why the woman I just described would throw that all away for a man she barely knows. An assassin. Jason Bourne."

"Maybe I should be asking you how well you know her."

"She's an interesting person. She fought her way to the top without so much as an audit. Never broke a rule, never even bent one." The file stops, resting lightly against his hand. Strangely, the silence is more ominous than the tapping. "Until Berlin. Something happened in Berlin. She changed."

"Watching a man blow his brains out will do that," he answers sharply; wary of where the conversation is turning.

The man leans his head to the side once again, turning his scar askew and making it that much harder to ignore. "You'd take a bullet for her, wouldn't you?" The silence is deafening and there is no answer to that question that will help Pam. "It would be nothing to give her your car and hold off reporting it stolen long enough to give her a head start."

"I have nothing to tell you that I haven't already told the investigators."

The man leans forward, the smile suddenly gone from his face. "I don't need your help to find her. What you tell me only changes what happens to her once I do. I want an explanation."

Tom takes a deep breath before responding, refusing to look away from the man's gaze. There must be mental damage behind that scar for him to be demanding an explanation for Pam's actions. No one from the Agency has cared to ask why, they only care that she broke the rules. "Captain David Webb. How's that for your explanation?"

"A ghost. Captain Webb's family buried him on June 5,1999 after he was killed in action in Somalia."

"Jason Bourne might disagree."

"Also a ghost. Jason Charles Bourne was killed on March 25, 1968 in Vietnam."

Tom is surprised by the fact that there ever was a Jason Bourne. He manages to keep his expression neutral, realizing that the stranger with the scar probably knows a great deal about Bourne and Blackbriar. It made a certain kind of sense that they would use names of soldiers long gone, with families who wouldn't ask questions. Irrationally, he wonders if the real Jason Bourne's family has a flag or a medal hanging on their wall as ironic tribute to the fallen soldier.

The man is still watching Tom with eerie focus; his expression not giving away any secrets, but still conveying the impression that everything Tom says will be vitally important to Pam's survival. "Webb contacted her when he arrived in New York. She gave him the window to break into the deep cover office; she provided the security access card."

"That's ridiculous-"

He reaches into his coat pocket and pulls out a staff clearance card, holding it between his index and middle fingers. "All identification cards have chips embedded in them and every time it's used, that ID is stored in the system. This is the card that gave Webb access to Vosen's office. It's registered to Pamela Landy."

Tom's hope begins to fade; if true, this alone will be grounds to send Landy to prison and throw away the key. "She would have told me."

"A canvas of motels in Allentown turned up one cashmere scarf, black, soaked with Webb's blood. A Honda Civic was reported stolen from the motel parking lot. Do I need to keep going?"

He's half tempted to refuse to answer without a lawyer present, but he doubts either the law or the Constitution will protect him against Blackbriar and any of its creations.

"Tell me why she's helping him, tell me what she's trying to accomplish." He sounds genuinely confused by Pam's choices.

"Because of what they did to him. To David Webb."

The crooked, arrogant smile returns. "Captain Webb knew what he was signing up for, Agent Cronin. Don't be fooled into believing he didn't understand what it meant. He is not the maligned hero in this story and I'm not the villain with a disfiguring scar."

It feels as though the temperature in the room has dropped ten degrees. He trusts Pam; trusts her with his life and his future. Does she know? With Bourne as fragmented as he is, it's unlikely that his induction into the program came up as casual driving conversation. The answer he can't be sure of is whether or not this knowledge would've changed Pam's decision. Volunteer or not, Bourne hasn't given any indication that he has warm and fuzzy feelings for Blackbriar. But what if David Webb wasn't all that different from Jason Bourne? Did they make an assassin, or did they merely find one?

The man is still watching him, still waiting for an answer. He doesn't know what answer to give, which one will keep Pam from harm and send this man off in the wrong direction. "Because the American people deserve to know about Blackbriar. Because government should always be accountable to its people."

"So what's her game plan, Agent Cronin? Expose Blackbriar and then leave you to hang as an accessory while she disappears with a thirty million dollar black ops weapon. Sounds like you put your life on the line for her and she repaid you by setting you up to take a fall."

Furious, he stands up, clenching his fists tightly. "I'm going to ask you to leave."

The man very deliberately lays the file down on the coffee table in front of the sofa before standing. "When she contacts you, and I know she will, I want you to think real hard about what could happen to you and that perfect little family of yours."

Tom keeps rigid, barely containing his anger and fear over the threat toward his family. "Get out." He doesn't bother following the man out of his home, unable to relax until he hears the door close. The file folder has a malevolent presence; there's no good reason the man would leave it behind. Whatever its contents are, they can only make the situation worse.

It feels as though the weight on his shoulders has increased; he's carrying the fate of his wife and daughter as well. Sinking back down onto the couch, he reaches out to rest his fingertips against the folder. There is no audible ticking, but he can't escape the feeling that it's a time bomb.

"Tom? Honey?" Carla's voice breaks through his focus. Her face is white, indicating that she's been standing in the hallway for some time. "Who was that man?"

He's tempted to lie but can't find the words. "I don't know. He...he was asking about Pam."

"Is she going to be all right?" She moves to sit at his side, reaching out to take his hand.

"I hope so."

"What now?"

Pressing a kiss against the back of her hand, he smiles as cheerfully as he can manage. "We wait. She'll come forward as soon as she can."

"It feels like you're under house arrest. They won't let you go to work; they followed me to the grocery store this morning. I'm afraid to even pick up the phone." She lays her head against his shoulder, soft brown hair fluttering down around her face. He brushes it behind her ear, savoring the light floral scent of her shampoo. "I know I wanted you to spend more time with Mary, but a trip to Disneyland would have been fine."

He can tell she's trying to make light of it, to find the humor in a dark situation. The courage in her attempt at humor makes him that much more terrified of losing her and Mary. He knows Pam, but now he's seen what she's up against and he's not convinced this is a fight she can win. If it was as simple as right versus wrong, he would breathe easier, but fighting men like that, buried so deep into covert organizations that they're accountable to no one, is never simple. He doesn't have a name or identifying organization to give her; he can't warn her about spooks and shadows with scars.

"I need to check on a few things, it should only take an hour or so. Then the three of us can pretend we're in Disneyland, we'll build a castle out of pillows and couch cushions. How does that sound?"

Carla smiles, kissing his forehead lightly as she gets up. "I'll start lunch."

Once she's gone, he takes the file folder and heads into the den and his laptop. The investigators have already been through his computer and all of his files, but they didn't take the actual machine. He's convinced they installed all manner of programs to track his use of the machine instead; there's no point in leaving it otherwise. They want Pamela enough to allow him the freedom to lead them straight to her.

Settling down at his laptop, he waits impatiently as it connects to the Internet. The blank file folder continues to haunt him, lurking at the edge of his vision, but he continues to ignore it. Whatever information they freely give him will be intended to intimidate or terrify him into giving up Pam's location.

A location he doesn't have.

"Thank you, Freedom of Information Act," he mutters under his breath as the browser window finally opens. He searches for the two pieces of information that he does have: David Webb and Jason Charles Bourne. If he can verify either of the men ever existed, if the man was telling the truth, there will be at least two facts he has in a world of shifting reality.

Captain David Webb is easy. In a town of twelve thousand people, an Army Captain killed in action made headlines. According to the archived newspaper article and obituary, David Webb was laid to rest as a hero and small town favorite son. _June 5, 1999_. He wonders briefly if there is actually someone buried in Webb's coffin.

Jason Bourne proves more difficult to find. Carefully navigating from page to page, he searches through as many public access databases as he can find without stumbling across any reference to a Jason Bourne killed in Vietnam. On a hunch, he moves into the missing in action databases. The name is listed under the year: _Jason Charles Bourne. MIA._

The specificity of the date pricks at him, _March 25, 1968_. He can't fathom a reason why the man would have deliberately given him an exact date. How did the man know the real Bourne was dead? Uneasy, and wary of prying eyes and ears at the Justice Department, he closes the web pages and shuts down his laptop.

His gaze falls to the folder and, once against, he's troubled with the choice it presents. Is it meant to make him doubt his loyalty to Pam? Is it meant to trick him into sending her rushing into a trap? He has no way to determine if his family will be in greater danger if he knows what's inside or if he doesn't. The less he knows, the less he can give away and the less of a risk he is to Pam.

But can he risk not knowing?

With dread turning the pit of his stomach into ice, he slowly opens the folder. The first page is a blurred copy of an old enlistment record for Jason Charles Bourne. Birthdate, blood type, all of the basic details for the other Jason Bourne laid out in black and white. When he reaches the bottom of the page, his heart nearly skips a beat. _Double agent. Terminated._ The date is left conspicuously absent, lost to all but those who were directly involved.

"Why would he give this to me?" he asks the empty room, far too used to having Pam there and always two or three steps ahead of him.

Beneath the enlistment record is a black and white photograph of three men dressed in camouflage. The background is dense jungle, probably Vietnam. He immediately recognizes the man on the left, although the picture was taken before he obtained the distinctive scar. The angle of his stance obscures the name patch above his left breast pocket, but his companions' patches are clearly visible. The man on the far right has a patch that reads Bourne. Standing between them, captured in the midst of laughter, is a much younger Ezra Kramer.

It doesn't make any sense.

The last document in the folder is an old, archive style operations manual with the word MEDUSA stamped across the front in bold, black letters. He slowly flips through the pages, pouring over the entries in an effort to absorb all of the information he can. Much of it is coded in language he doesn't understand, strings of numbers and lingo that may as well be another language. Familiar and unfamiliar names are peppered throughout the document: Kramer, Bourne, Conklin, Hirsch, Reynolds.

After the first dozen pages, and with increasing horror, he begins to comprehend the true purpose of the Bourne Identity.

**

"What?" Senator Carlisle asks, dumbfounded by the impossibility of what former CIA Director Marshall is telling him.

"It's all gone. Whole sections of surveillance video...vanished. All records of the access cards used to get into Vosen's office, gone. There is absolutely no evidence that Jason Bourne was ever in the building." The lines in Marshall's brow have become permanent, etched into his skin by the weight of the world.

"You're telling me that someone has tampered with the entire system. How?"

"We don't know. But they've left us with nothing. A ghost, a memory. We can't prove Bourne was even there."

"And Landy?"

"We have the audio copy of the phone call you received from CRI, but even that has now been erased from the mainframe. Anything and everything that could've been connected to Bourne or Landy is gone."

"Vosen?"

"He tried to cover his own ass, that's for sure. The forensics team is digging into his computer files and they've already found red flags. He was sloppy, overzealous." The lines in Marshall's brow seem to deepen by the second. "Whoever altered the mainframe was efficient and precise. And they didn't destroy any evidence of the Blackbriar program itself. It wasn't Vosen."

Senator Carlisle reaches for the bottle of antacids that will be his permanent companion for the duration of the burgeoning scandal. "My God. This is unbelievable. There can't be more than a handful of people on this planet who could do something like this. Waltzing into a CIA building is one thing, hacking into the mainframe is a completely different can of worms. Could Bourne have done this?"

"He had access to Vosen's computer and we're investigating the theory that a virus could have been planted, but it's doubtful that Bourne himself would have the know-how to do this. His specialization was languages, hand to hand, small arms, logistics." Marshall closes the brief on his lap and passes it over the desk. "There is one more thing."

"You're telling me this gets worse?"

Reaching into his jacket pocket, he slides out a photograph and places it carefully on top of the brief. "This man visited Tom Cronin, Landy's second in command, this morning."

"He's certainly not shy," Carlisle comments as he squints at the photograph. The man in question is looking directly at the camera and smiling, although it would be impossible to know for sure if he'd been aware of the surveillance. A distinctive scar across his face is clearly visible. "Has he been identified? Shouldn't be too hard."

"His name is Mark Reynolds. Private contractor."

"You mean he's a mercenary."

"According to the surveillance team, he questioned Cronin about Landy."

"So has everyone else on the eastern seaboard."

Marshall takes a deep breath, his expression troubled. "Reynolds is a ghost among ghosts, Senator. The very fact that he's here, and that he obviously wants us to take notice, moves this investigation to an entirely different level."

"I'm not following."

"How well do you know your history? Particularly of covert Agency operations during the Vietnam War."

"He hardly looks old enough to have served in Vietnam." Squinting at the photograph again, he tries to guess the man's age. "That would make him nearly sixty at the youngest."

"With all due respect, Senator, how old are you?"

"Point taken. Continue."

"It might interest you to know who he served with during Vietnam. Ezra Kramer."

Senator Carlisle leans back into his chair, trying to wrestle the information into a manageable, coherent picture of the situation. That Marshall feels compelled to bring this information to his attention is enough to make him consider its importance. "What you're telling me, however indirectly, is that although Ezra Kramer has denied all knowledge of the existence of Blackbriar, the appearance of this man would indicate otherwise. Have you discussed this with Fred?"

Marshall shakes his head quickly. "And have him run back to Kramer?"

"If we move on this, what happens?"

"Our first concern is Tom Cronin. I took the liberty of arranging transfer for him and his family to an FBI safe house. Then we've got to find a way to bring Landy in before Reynolds finds her. Kramer wouldn't be after her if she couldn't bring this back to him somehow."

"And you're sure no one else could have hired Reynolds?"

"No one else who would benefit from sending him after Landy." He waits a beat, letting the words settle into silence. "We have to move on Vosen before it's too late."

"Very well." Reaching for his phone, he dials in the number for the Attorney General's office. "Pray that Garrison is in the mood to arrest a few senior CIA officers. And Martin? Do I want to know how exactly you know about Reynolds?"

To his surprise, Marshall smiles. "History must be remembered to be avoided, Senator."

"That's a polite way of telling me to mind my own business." The female voice on the other end of the line tells him to hold. He doesn't press the issue because the poor woman sounds positively frantic. "What are we going to find, Martin? When we lift up this rock and shine a flashlight under it; tell me what else is going to come crawling out of that darkness."

Marshall's smile falters ever so slightly and his answer is nearly inaudible. "Medusa."


	7. Chapter 7

_The edges of Marie's face are soft in the moonlight, her hair falling in waves down over her shoulders; waves in the distance lap against beach in a soothing, asymmetrical rhythm._

_"But that's why we write them down. Because sooner or later you're going to remember something good." She believes it, believes he's going to get better if they only keep trying._

_"I do remember something good."_

_The dream stutters, hiccups, and he's once again alone on the porch. He hears footsteps and turns, expecting Marie._

_It's Pamela Landy standing next to him this time, blonde hair falling down around her face in waves. Not as soft, her edges are sharper than Marie's; pale skin is warm silver in the moonlight. "Sooner or later you're going to remember."_

_"I don't understand."_

_"You have to remember."_

_The dream is veering away from what he knows, away from memory, away from the solace of pretense, and there's a new sense of urgency beneath the surface. He's missing something important. "What? What am I supposed to remember?"_

_"Jason. You have to remember."_

_"Tell me...tell me what I'm supposed to remember."_

_The dream version of Landy smiles, crooked and eerie, and a pale scar line gradually seeps out of the shadows on her face. Blue eyes bore into him, setting the inside of his skull on fire. He doesn't understand, he doesn't remember._

_"You fit the profile."_

His eyes open, pain radiating out from the bullet wound in his back as he bolts upright. The tightness in his chest gives way as he breathes, pulling in air with desperate gulps. His surroundings clear, revealing the familiarity of the cabin. The lamp, the painting of the lighthouse; he can see bright blue sky – _how long has he been asleep?_ – through the window.

Pamela is beside him instantly, pressing a cool hand against his forehead. "David?"

"Nightmare," he tells her hoarsely. This time it's true. It wasn't a memory, wasn't his past; it was just a nightmare. A normal, human nightmare that doesn't mean anything sinister is lurking in the darkness.

He feels the bed shift as she moves away, averting his eyes as she pulls the flannel shirt around her bare body. The pain in his head lessens as the dream fades and the fragments that remain in his consciousness are bizarre, nonsensical. It was Marie, then Pamela, yet somehow he knows the creature in his dream was neither of them, it simply borrowed their faces and their voices to torment him.

The mattress shifts again as she returns with a glass of water and painkillers. "Here."

He swallows down all of the pills at once. The cool water soothes the heat beneath his skin. "Thank you."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

Rubbing circles into his temples, he tries to sort out what was memory and what wasn't. "Just faces, voices. A scar. I remember the scar. The man who brought me to Treadstone had a scar across the left side of his face." He traces a line across his cheek as demonstration but doesn't mention that it was her face bearing the mark in his dream. It isn't useful information, just a bizarre creation of his shattered mind.

"There are people who can help you, David."

"No one can fix what I've done."

"You don't have to do this alone."

He turns to face her, meeting her gaze directly. "Yes, I do. It's the only way I can do this."

His place is in the shadows; away from everything and everyone he might unintentionally destroy. There is nothing for him to go back to. No family, no job, no white picket fence around the American dream. They might leave him alone; they might turn him into a lab rat and dig around his brain trying to determine what went wrong. After all, to the men of Treadstone and Blackbriar, the amnesia wasn't the problem. He stood behind Wombozi and didn't pull the trigger; that was his malfunction.

"Let me help you."

"You've done enough," he says simply. She believed him when all the evidence made him a liar, pulled him out the river and out of harm's way. She will be the one who walks into the inferno with the fate of the CIA - _his fate_ \- in her hands. Blackbriar is her dragon to slay, not his. And all he can give her are words, breath given form but not meaning.

The determined expression returns and he doubts there's a power on earth that can stand between Pamela Landy and her goal. "If you stay here, just for a few more days, I'll come back with an offer. If it's not what you want, I'll help you disappear for good. We'll never bother you again."

_We._

Part of him desperately wants to understand her devotion in the face of all that's happened. He looked into the heart of darkness and only saw evil. Somehow, she sees more than that. What would have become of him if he'd found his way to her sooner? If she'd discovered Treadstone years ago, would he have been on the yacht that night? Against every instinct he has, he nods. Rationally, he knows that he's not ready to run again. Not yet.

_Maybe it's time to stop running._

Her hand glides lightly over his shoulder and down his back, her fingers searching out each cut, each bruise. She's focused and analytical as she inspects each of his wounds. "It'll be a few more days before you'll feel human again."

The smile is unbidden, stretching muscles he hasn't used in months. "No one's ever accused me of being human," he says, echoing her own words.

"Was that a joke? There was no mention of a sense of humor in your file."

"Laughter doesn't kill people." Stiff and sore, he pushes back until he can lean against the headboard of the bed. Even that small movement leaves him exhausted and wincing against the aching that seems to extend deep into his bones. It will be weeks before he'll be able to breath without pain.

Long legs unfurl from the blankets as she leaves the bed. "I need to get those files into the right hands. It's been..." she trails off, searching through her clothes for her watch. "Almost three days."

It feels longer than that. A lifetime has passed since he was plunging through the dark into the icy water below. He should stop her – _they can't let her live_ \- but he keeps quiet. There is no dissuading her, just as Marie could never convince him to let go, and his own future depends on what happens with those files. Either he'll be allowed to disappear or he'll be hunted for the rest of his life. Whether or not his freedom is worth Pamela's life, he can't answer.

He'll be alone again.

The realization is unsettling. In a very short time, he's become used to her presence and his hunger for companionship, for someone to fill the silence and stop the ghosts from swallowing him whole. But it makes him vulnerable and puts her at risk. Closing his eyes – watching Marie die was enough, too much – he tries to distance himself from the sounds of her preparations.

Pamela's voice breaks his reverie. "Coffee?" She hands him a mug, steam rising lazily and filling the room with the thick aroma.

Awkwardly, he motions to the room around them as if that explains everything he wants to tell her. "You should find him. Rick. Before it's too late."

"Believe me, I owe him...for this. For possibly saving both of our lives." There's more she wants to say, he can see the hesitation in the subtle way she bites at her lower lip, but she simply smiles before leaving him to his thoughts.

Maybe it's the lessening of the pain or receding fever; time seems to stand still in this place, pushing the reality of tomorrow into the distance. He always took shelter in the bustle of crowds – _they trained him to disappear_ – and the isolation of the woods offers a vastly different kind of protection. The unbroken silence appeals to him. His mind is quieter here, the tattered edges of his sanity no longer as sharp and painful.

When she returns again, she's wearing her coat and the dark wig that makes her almost a stranger. The backpack strap is clutched tightly in her fist. She places her gun on the chair beside the bed. "If they've decided to shoot me on sight...this won't stop them. But it might help you. There's a full clip and one in the chamber." She hesitates, biting at her lower lip as she sits down on the bed beside him. "If I'm not back in three or four days...if I can't come back myself, I'll send someone I know you can trust. I'll find a way if I can, but if I can't." She doesn't need to finish the sentence; they both know this isn't a social gathering she's attending and there's no guarantee she'll survive.

"Be careful," he manages to say. It's trite and useless. Once she's gone, he has to assume that she won't return.

"David." She looks down, the long wig falling down like a curtain and concealing much of her face. "About last night."

"No one will know-"

"I'm not worried about the ethics committee."

"It wasn't...I shouldn't have," he stops because he doesn't know what to say.

"I understand." The sad smile returns and he finally realizes what it means. This is the mask she wears, the barrier she puts up to keep the rest of the world at bay. She lives her life with eyes wide open and only a sad, barely-there smile hinting at possible regrets or shattered dreams.

"Good luck," he says finally.

She readjusts her grip on the backpack as she stands. "Try to rest. You'll need your strength." She pauses at the doorway, looking back for a moment before she turns around. The envelope of pictures is what caught her attention and called her back. She searches through them for a moment before selecting one, pulling it out and tucking it into her purse.

_One photograph._

As if reading his mind, she smiles. "It's on the kitchen counter. The picture of you and Marie."

He hadn't even allowed himself the hope that it was still safely stowed in the pockets of the backpack. Once she's gone, the sound of the engine faded completely away, he's left with only the crackle of the fire to keep him company. He feels strangely at peace. For the first time since meeting Marie, he allows cautious optimism to seep into his view of the world.

Maybe it's finally over; maybe this time, he's free.

**

"Martin, listen to me," Tom Cronin argues, refusing to let the FBI agent drag him out of his home. "This is Pam we're talking about. I'm not leaving."

Marshall seems unfazed by the protest. "It's for your own protection, Tom."

"Take Carla and Mary and get them as far away as possible. Please. But let me stay here. Pam isn't going to trust anyone else, sir. Not even you." He waits for that to sink in, unsure if he's stepped into more dangerous territory and made the situation worse. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Carla and knows from her expression that she isn't going to stop him.

"Alright. But you're coming with me."

"Thank you, sir." Trading one form of anxiety for another, he reaches for the suitcase Carla hurriedly packed. When he opens to his mouth to speak, she shakes her head, her eyes bright with tears.

"Don't. Don't try to explain why you're choosing your job over your family. I don't want to hear it. I can't." Her voice is uneven and furious, her hands clenched tightly around the straps of her purse.

"Carla, please."

Tears spill out onto her cheeks, breaking his heart into pieces with each one. "What if they kill you, Tom? What do I do if you're gone? What do I tell Mary? That her father loved his job more than he loved her?"

It's not the first time they've had this argument and he hasn't yet found a way to salve her fears. "It's not that simple."

"Yes, it is, Tom." She wipes at her cheeks angrily before pushing past him.

He follows her out of the house to the waiting car and makes sure she and Mary are safely inside. Torn by the decision he has to make, he tries to smile and prays she'll come to understand. "I love you." She looks up through the open window, her dark brown eyes the same as the day he fell in love with them, but she doesn't speak, merely pulls Mary tighter and turns her face away.

The engine starts, forcing him to back away from the car. He watches the dark sedan until it disappears around the corner, doubting his choice, doubting himself. Is he making a mistake?

"It never gets easier," Marshall says quietly as he waves the next car forward.

Tom climbs into the car; there's little he can say that will make it easier to watch his wife and child disappear when it could be the last time he sees them.

Marshall slides into the seat next to him, watching carefully, as though trying to peer directly into his brain and determine if he's lied about his involvement in Landy's disappearance. "The Justice Department set up temporary headquarters at CRI. We'll join them there. We've haven't made any progress in finding Landy. Which means the people after her probably haven't either."

"I don't know where she is." He's weary of repeating those six words over and over again. "But she said she'd find a way to contact me."

Marshall raises an eyebrow. "You failed to mention that earlier."

"Must've slipped my mind."

"We have no doubt that if she does make contact, it will be with you. That's why we're trying to keep you alive," Marshall explains dryly.

"And Vosen?"

Glancing at his watch, Marshall shrugs. "He should be in handcuffs as we speak. They arrested Dr. Albert Hirsch almost an hour ago. The Justice Department already has a fairly lengthy list of charges against them even without Landy's testimony."

"Then why all this?" He motions to the car and what it means; the necessity of sending his family to a safe house. "If you've got Vosen and Hirsch already, why are you still after Pam?"

"We're not," Marshall answers, almost impatiently. "But someone is. We need to get to her before they do. Pam's smart, we both know that, but she can't outsmart the entire Agency."

"Hasn't seemed to be a problem for Bourne."

A muscle in Marshall's jaw twitches and Tom can almost hear the sound of his teeth grinding together. "They're searching the river for his body. Will they find it, Agent Cronin?"

"Depends on who's looking."

Eyes narrowing, Marshall leans his chin against a closed fist and waits several long minutes before speaking again. This time, the tone of his voice is conciliatory. "His name is Mark Reynolds. The man who approached you this morning. I doubt that I need to tell you that he's dangerous."

"Who's he with? NSA?"

"The highest bidder. He's a contract killer, plain and simple."

Tom wants to trust Marshall. More than anything, he wants to believe that the Agency contains more people like Pam than people like Vosen. He hesitates, fully aware of the risk of revealing what he thinks he knows. It's not just his future that he's gambling with; it's Pam and his family that he could put in danger with one wrong word. After a moment's temptation, he bites his tongue and looks away.

The car comes to a stop outside CRI and Marshall climbs out without further discussion, waiting for Tom to join him and their armed escort before entering the building. It's the quickest, and possibly the most frightening, entrance to work that Tom has ever had; they're waved past all of the usual security precautions by fully armed Marines. Obediently trailing after his escort, he follows them through the familiar building. It's amazing how different everything, and everyone, looks. There's fear in the eyes of the coworkers he passes and outright terror on the faces of the mail interns, who seem like frightened rabbits even on the best of days. He tries to smile at the faces he knows, but they quickly look the other way. One of the Marines motions them into Pam's office.

"Take a seat, Agent Cronin." Marshall stays in the doorway, one hand on the doorknob. "I am going to strongly suggest that you not leave this office without an escort. Even more strongly, that you alert one of the investigators the moment she contacts you."

"If she contacts me."

Closing the door behind him, Marshall leaves Tom alone in Landy's office. Whether they're leaving him to stew and pace or if they've bugged every square inch of the office, he doesn't know. He moves to Pam's chair and tries not to feel out of place sitting behind her desk. All of her files have been cleared away and the only remnants of her computer are a few lonely, disconnected cables. He sets his cell phone carefully and deliberately in the center of the desk, willing it to ring.

He has no doubt that Reynolds, whoever he really is, will eventually find her. It's only a matter of time.

It's also likely that Marshall is fully aware of where Reynolds comes from, of the connection to Kramer and the Medusa Project. They wouldn't be sending Carla and Mary to a safehouse outside the jurisdiction of the CIA if they didn't know what kind of man Reynolds was. What kind of monster.

The fact that he was right – _programs like that don't disappear, they just change names_ – is small consolation. On the surface, Blackbriar is a far cry from Medusa; sophisticated and slick, with more technology and computing power than they even dreamed of nearly forty years ago. But underneath, they're the same. Death and power; justified violence twisted for personal and political gain. He's still trying to sort it out in his mind, preparing the bits and pieces so that he can hand them over to Pamela when she returns.

She needs to know what the darkness will look like when she forces it into the light.

**

The cup of coffee has long gone cold. Ezra Kramer grimaces at the bitter taste as he takes small sips. Fresh coffee would require leaving his desk and he does not have time to look away even for a second. There is too much damage control left to be done. Blackbriar is collapsing down around him, an avalanche of blood, sweat, and toil to succeed where others had failed. He'd finally done it – _Frankenstein could only dream of this creation_ – only to watch it dismantled by the idiots at the Justice Department. The anger has passed and he's approaching resignation. There will be no escape from this scandal, he can only try to salvage as much as he can.

"Sir?" the intercom buzzes with his besieged staff assistant's voice. "Fred Knowles is here to see you, sir."

"Send him in." He sets the foul coffee aside and pulls off his reading glasses. The dull ache in his skull remains, heedless of the painkillers he's taking.

"She's coming in," Knowles practically pants, his face splotched with red from whatever exertion he undertook to bring Kramer the news. "The call came in twenty minutes ago. There's going to be a meet. Marshall is heading the retrieval team."

It's the best news he's gotten in days. "Where?"

"Grand Central Station. Ten o'clock."

"I want you there." He ignores Knowles' sputtered protest. "I don't care how; I don't care what you have to do to be part of that team. Just do it."

"Sir-"

"You'd better get going," he snaps impatiently, already picking up his phone and switching to a secure line as Knowles hastily retreats. Whether by the grace of God or a stroke of luck, he's been handed a gift-wrapped window of opportunity and he is not about to let it slip through his fingers.

"How's the weather, Ez?" Reynold's asks as soon as the call connects.

"The wind just changed in our favor. Should hold until ten o'clock if you're coming into Grand Central. There'll be a cab waiting for you when you arrive. It'll point you in the right direction. Let's get this wrapped up."

"Consider it done."

Kramer settles the phone back into its cradle, pleased with the stroke of luck. It's as good as over now. The simplicity of Reynolds and his team is what makes them so effective, so efficient. He's a master of improvisation, using the very environment around him as a weapon and until the scar rendered him easily recognizable, he'd been able to disappear effortlessly into a crowd. Even now, as the hidden puppet master behind his team of mercenaries, he retains the skills that make him invaluable.

That made him _Delta_.


	8. Chapter 8

The train arrives well before the arranged meeting time; the buffer of time giving Pamela an opportunity to unobtrusively scan the terminal, eying each shadow and crevice with distrust. If Kramer is going to send someone to kill her, this will be his window of opportunity. Her brief phone call to Tom all but assured her that even the Justice Department is expecting an attempt of some kind. Martin Marshall agreed to every one of her demands, a sign that they are desperate to bring her in as soon as possible.

Bringing Martin onto the investigation is an interesting choice; one that she spent a great deal of the train ride mulling over. There's a fine line between attributing the Agency with too much foresight and forgetting how deliberate the decisions can be. Did they involve Martin because he'd worked with her over Berlin or in spite of it?

Satisfied that she's arrived before any potential assassin could get into place, she takes a moment to breathe, to reassess. There are too many entrances into the terminal for her to watch them all. Gripping the backpack strap over her shoulder, she heads to the lower levels.

She needs to disappear.

It's easy to get lost in the restaurants and shops. She orders a cup of coffee and a salad, and requests a seat in the back corner with a full view of the rest of the restaurant. So much of her planning hinges on what takes place within the next three hours. Obviously, she needs to survive to implement any of her strategies. But even beyond that are variables she can't define until the moment they arrive. Will they need a scapegoat and see her as an easy mark? Or will they listen and then relegate her to a basement office, pushing paperwork until retirement?

Her hopes are pinned on the fact that both Vosen and Hirsch have already been arrested - _the headlines are screaming with it_ \- no small step for a lumbering bureaucracy. Will they believe that she played no part in Blackbriar? Or will they believe Vosen and Kramer? Picking at her salad, her appetite lost to the butterflies in her stomach, she has to consider the possibility that they're merely bringing her in to arrest her as well. Cynically, she can even imagine them holding Tom against his will and forcing him to cooperate. Regardless of what the Justice Department decides to do with her, she has to find a way to barter for David's freedom.

The secluded cabin already seems far away, like a dream she had on the train. A dream of heat and skin and forgetting, just for a moment, that she might not live to see her next birthday. She can imagine the look of disappointment on Tom's face. He wouldn't understand. She's not even sure that she understands.

It's the first completely crazy thing she's done since that summer, since Rick Saunders convinced her to leave her textbooks – _most of them_ – home and disappear into the woods with him.

 _Easy_ would be calling it a lapse in judgment or a moment of weakness. _Simple_ would be brushing it off as an irrational action in what could be that last hours of her life. But it's neither easy nor simple and to say that the decision rests lightly on her conscience would be a lie.

If she was worried about her career, she would have to consider the ethical implications of her choice. Her split lower lip and the tender spots on her throat can attest that he's far from emotionally stable. A wounded man, a broken man, a man with a thirty million dollar price tag; the Agency's ethics committee would have a field day with how completely inappropriate it was for her to go to bed with such a man.

She knows he was either grasping at a fantasy that Marie Kreutz was still alive or desperately searching for something to fill the void her death left behind. That doesn't make it less unethical; it only makes it more complicated than a policy manual can begin to cover.

There's one thing she finally understands; why Marie stayed with him, why Nicky gave up everything to help him. It was about doing the right thing, but it was also about _Jason_. It was the energy of him, the struggle contained just beneath the surface, and the way he seems to burn and bend but never break.

The coffee warms her, but does nothing to dispel the haunted restlessness. All of the years spent in self-imposed isolation have come to demand a reckoning; years of knowing where Rick was and refusing to allow even the hope that he could still love her, that they could find a way for both of their dreams to coexist. She made the decision and she'll stand by it to the end, but it's forcing her to recognize that the sum total of her life doesn't add up.

Exposing Blackbriar isn't enough. How can she go back to a life that consists of an office, an empty townhouse, and graveyard of lost possibilities stretching between them.

The insistently nagging feeling pricking at her conscience stubbornly refuses to let go of her attention. Now, when she needs to be focused on staying alive and securing David's future, her mind is feverishly churning over her choices, her life, and her very identity. She's prided herself on being too practical, too intelligent, to be attracted to the dangerous men that her profession has in spades; too disciplined to allow momentary weakness and a pair of blue eyes to blind her to reality.

Again.

She hasn't managed to come up with an explanation. He swept through her world like a hurricane and, impossibly, came to rest in her arms. There is no guilt for that; for trying to help him, for needing the same thing he did. Contact. Simultaneously, it feels like a violation of trust and every promise she made to remain detached, objective. She's fought tooth and nail against the stereotype that women in the CIA are always at risk of becoming involved with their agents or their targets. The failure to live up to her own standards bites at her where she can't reach to swat it away.

All of her senses are tied up in the remembering - _and trying desperately not to remember_ \- the night before. The taste of salt and skin; feeling muscle shift beneath his skin, her hands not knowing where to grip without causing him pain. Heat, contact - _his hands are rough_ \- and the weight of him pressing down on her. Tactile; still lingering on her skin. The sound of his breathing still whispers in her ears.

How can she go back?

Piece by piece, she pushes each memory away until her mind is clear and her hands are steady once again. A mid-life crisis will have to wait until she knows she'll live long enough to have one. She cannot afford to be distracted.

She has to think.

That's her strength. It's gotten her this far, kept her one step ahead of everyone else. She's been more organized, more prepared; she's always wanted it more than the other guy. The train of thought isn't particularly helpful, serving as yet another question of what she has to show for her life. If this is the end, she doubts anyone other than Tom will have much to say at her funeral.

_Pull yourself together._

The clock is ticking. She pays for the coffee and barely eaten salad and leaves the relative safety of the restaurant corner behind. With the dark brown wig and casual clothing, it's unlikely even Tom will recognize her. Shrugging off her coat, she folds it over her arms, the dark backpack disappearing completely beneath the wool. The thick flannel shirt isn't as warm, but she can stand the cold. It smells of cedar and swallows up her slender frame in excess fabric, bringing back more memories of the cabin and its true owner. Returning it – _perhaps with a bottle of very expensive wine and a very good explanation_ \- is a surprisingly pleasant prospect and something to look forward to if or when the dust settles.

The budding optimism is a surprise. There's too little evidence to build a case for a happy ending, but she can't quite squash the flicker of hope that events have turned in her favor.

She follows the ebb and flow of the crowd, staying within the anonymity of larger groups moving through the terminal. To a casual observer, she's merely moving through on her way to elsewhere. The four-sided clock above the Information stand, large and yet dwarfed by the sheer size of the terminal itself, serves as an anchor point to her wanderings. She's circling, gradually moving inward like a star just barely caught in the gravitational pull of a black hole.

Tom.

The way he stands is distinctive even without the typical trench coat. He's wearing a baseball cap and a denim jacket but he's still the same Tom Cronin she knows. Once she's found him, the others become readily apparent. Even Martin is there, further off and standing beside a man she doesn't recognize.

She nearly crosses her fingers as she makes the final half-circle around the clock and approaches Tom from the right side. "Tom," she says softly once she's beside him.

His eyes light up and if she didn't know better, she would've guessed he was about to hug her. "There's a car waiting, we've got to move quickly."

Nodding, understanding the anxiety in his voice, she falls into step beside him. Marshall and his shadow are moving through the crowd to meet them. There are more unfamiliar faces but very familiar trench coats at the edges of her vision, giving her the feeling of being surrounded by a wolf pack. She hears a cell phone ring, barely audible in the noise of the crowd.

Tom's grip on her arm tightens just as Martin and the stranger reach them. He's pushing her forward, toward Martin, as the sound of a gunshot explodes through the terminal. She tumbles to the floor as Tom's weight hits her, grabbing for the backpack instinctively and ducking her head away from the feet racing past her as the bystanders flee in panic. Looking up, searching for Martin, she hears another gunshot ring out. The stranger's throat collapses with the impact of a bullet, spraying Marshall with blood. It's the first time she's seen Martin Marshall look absolutely furious. He reaches her first, shouting into the din and grabbing at her arms.

"Tom," she says automatically before realizing that he's not moving. Frantically, she pushes at his shoulder, rolling him onto his back. There's blood on his lips and spreading over his shirt in a macabre bloom. "Tom? Tom!" His eyes are glassy, unfocused; his grip on her arm lessening.

"Get her out of here now!" Marshall roars.

"No! Tom! No!" Frantically, she presses her fingers against his neck in search of a pulse. _There, it's there._ His lips move but only breath and blood come out, staining his lips and teeth before it spills down his cheek.

A strong arm wraps around her waist, forcibly dragging her away. She struggles against the man hauling her toward the exit. The crowd closes in front of her, cutting off the view of Tom. Men with dark clothes, earpieces, and their weapons drawn surround her; each one of them is a potential enemy. One of them is clearing the way, waving his FBI badge and shouting. The man holding her nearly tosses her into the backseat of a Chevy Suburban, the backpack still clutched tightly in her arms. Martin pulls himself up after her and slams the door, shouting for the driver to get moving. His face is sprayed with blood; it's dripping down his cheek and neck.

"Tom...Tom," she repeats.

"EMTs were standing by, they've already got him. He'll be en route to the hospital in seconds."

"Standing by." She nearly chokes on the words. "What the hell is going on, Martin?"

"I thought there was a leak. Apparently I was right." He pulls a handkerchief from his pocket and begins to wipe away the blood. "Details of the investigation were being given to people outside the Justice Department. Enough of them to bury us in paperwork for fifty years. As it is, Vosen may never see actual jail time because of a goddamn technicality. His lawyers know far more than they should and that means a leak. I thought it had to be Knowles." He grimaces at the blood soaked handkerchief in his hand. "Apparently not."

"You son of a bitch. Why wasn't he wearing a vest?"

"He was. We all are," Martin snaps, jerking down his collar to reveal the Kevlar beneath. "You will not leave my sight until tomorrow morning when the hearing convenes and you will not fight me on this, Pam. Do you understand me?"

"Hearing? What are you talking about?" She knows full well that it could take months to get a hearing with the congressional oversight committee.

"The Intelligence Oversight Committee is holding an emergency hearing at the request of the President. They'll be determining how much leash to give the Justice Department and between the two of us, this is going to get worse before it's over. You're the primary witness. Frankly, the sooner we get you talking, the better your odds of surviving this."

"And Tom?" she challenges, an invisible fist clenched around her heart and squeezing painfully. "What about his odds?"

Marshall softens, just slightly. "I'm sorry, Pam."

**

It's hunger that wakes him rather than another nightmare. Dawn has already washed the sky with blue and pink, painting out the clouds in relief. The air is cold; he sits up slowly and swings his legs over the edge of the bed, the floor colder is even colder against his feet. Moving hurts less than it did the day before, his joints working a bit easier as they warm up. He gets dressed without hurrying, not able to remember the last time he had that luxury – _that doesn't mean much coming from an amnesiac_ – and leaves the bedroom.

Sleep has cleared much of the fog inside his head, enabling him to think about what his next step should be. North, he decides, into Canada. But first, he has to find his way out of the woods.

The kitchen has been straightened and organized, the signature of Pamela imposing order onto chaos. As promised, the sole reminder of his life with Marie is lying on the kitchen counter. He picks it up; the ache inside his chest seems to be just a little less than before. Maybe he'll return to Goa. Someday. Marie had loved it there. He stayed there a little too long, gotten a little too comfortable, because she'd loved it.

He won't make that mistake again.

Setting down the photograph, he picks aimlessly through the food Pamela left behind. Canned goods, bagels; anything that would last without too much worry. He picks out a bagel and bites into it, chewing without particularly caring about the taste. His attention is on the world outside; the woods, the melting snow, and the question of how he's going to get across the border when the time comes. He flexes his right hand and wrist, testing his grip and the stiffness of his joints.

Not ready.

Outside, beyond the relative warmth and safety of the cabin, a flock of birds takes to the sky in a flurry. Bits of ice and snow glitter in the sun as they tumble away from shaken branches. He watches as the shimmering veil disappears into the underbrush. There's no reason to believe the exodus is due to anything but a deer or feral cat moving through the forest in search of food.

There's no one there.

Silently, he pads across the kitchen. Through the windows, there is only forest and snow as far as he can see but, despite his own attempts to rein in the paranoia, he reaches for the doorknob. He has to know for sure, has to prove to himself once and for all that it's only in his head.

The outside air is cold, heavy with humidity and the smell of damp wood and leaves. He scans the tree line, looking for a broken branch or a footprint, anything at all that doesn't belong. In the distance, the thin trail of smoke signals that the neighbors are peacefully enjoying the solitude. Even the generator has gone quiet; its humming ceased with consumption of available fuel.

Too quiet.

Ignoring the cold air and the icy bite of the wooden porch, he steps out to extend his line of sight. To the right, he can see the corner of the utility shed where the generator is housed. Beyond it is the propane white propane tank, half disappearing into the white world around it. To the left are the woods, thick with trees and brambles without leaves but still tangled enough to obscure what lies behind them.

Shifting to the right, his arms loose at his sides - _always be ready_ \- as he moves along the porch. The porch itself wraps around the corner of the cabin, leading to a second set of stairs descending to the ground. One, two, three; he stops at the last step that is clear of ice and drifting snow. He can see Pamela's footprints to and from the utility shed; hers is the only human trail through the snow. Dripping water, falling from icicles still clinging to life along the edge of the roof, is the only sound. He watches several drops fall, splashing against the lumpy trough of ice forming along the base of the wall.

The sound of his breath moving through his throat seems loud in the quiet, his concentration completely on the information he can gather through his sense of hearing. Every creak and groan of a far off tree trunk, every whisper as branches brush together in the gentle wind; he picks out each distinct noise and mentally maps it back to a location.

Drip, drip. Water falling. Creak, whoosh. A tree swaying as branches slough off ice and snow.

Silence.

Click. Metal on metal.

His eyes widen, muscles tensing as adrenaline kicks up his heart rate. Focused intently on that one sound, he eases back against the side of the cabin. Searching the edge of trees gives no new information, remaining stubbornly the same as they were before. Has he finally lost his mind? Have his nightmares crept into his waking hours to further tear apart his sanity? He clears his mind of the clamoring thoughts - _don't think, react_. He can't believe the silence, the unbroken snow, or his own, human desire to believe that this one place is safe.

One, two; his feet ache with the cold and his breath billows out in a fog in front of him. A single step remains to put him back onto the porch. He pauses, straining to pick out even the smallest of sounds that shouldn't be there. The scuff of boot treads or the brush of fabric; any hint of an alien presence hidden beneath the murmur of the wind through the forest.

Creak.

He recognizes the sound of the front door, the hinges sticking with lack of use. It could be the wind pushing open what he didn't latch behind him. The possibility makes him hesitate, waiting for a sign either that he is justified in his paranoia or that he has finally gone over the edge into madness. Frozen against the wall of the cabin, he can't know for sure if it's merely a squawking hinge or an intruder. His nerves are frayed, torn and tattered at the ends until he can't distinguish between the sounds of the world and the sounds of his world. Like the nagging in the back of his mind that the furniture inside is too placed, too perfect; he can't filter out what should trigger this response and what shouldn't.

 _Faith_ , Marie used to tell him. He never understood, never knew how he was supposed to believe that it was ever just the wind or just a coincidence.

_I'm no longer Jason Bourne._

His breath is ragged as he tries to inhale more deeply, hands shaking from the adrenaline and the cold. All of the ghosts - all of his ghosts - crowd into his mind the moment he lets his guard down. He winces under the onslaught, pressing the heel of his palm against his temple in an effort to hold them back.

_I'm no longer Jason Bourne._

It will never be true until he can break down every instinct and every bit of training they drilled into him. It started with Wombozi, with letting go of the trigger instead of squeezing it. He has to dismantle _Jason Bourne_ one piece at a time until there is nothing left.

He has to choose to believe that it is only the wind.

Numb from the cold, he barely feels the wood against his foot as he takes the last step onto the porch. It feels much larger than a single step or a few inches in height. It feels as though he's left a little bit of his past, a little bit of Jason behind him. He feels lighter, more alive.

More human.

His mind, already overtaxed and pulled in every possible direction, has time to process the scene in front of him. Two men dressed in winter style camouflage with rifles and boots gleaming black in the sunlight; one at the door, one waiting for him to come around the corner of the porch. He recognizes the man in front of him, the scar cutting across his face, as the demon from his dreams.

_You fit the profile._

The butt of the man's rifle smashes into his face, bright stars exploding across his vision and taking the world with them as they burn out.

**

Make-up covers the bruises on her throat. Lipstick masks the cut on her lip. And the blood - _Tom's blood_ \- washes away with soap and hot water. She stares at her hands and it doesn't seem real. The black suit is perfectly tailored and the white shirt beneath is starched nearly to the point of snapping like glass; her reflection looks perfectly polished and prepared.

Calm.

Inside, she's shivering with a hundred emotions. Anger, fear, grief; the ground has been torn out from under her even when she thought there was nothing left to lose. Her career, her carefully constructed life; she never believed they could take Tom away from her. The ache in her chest feels just as real as the sting in her lower lip, but there is nothing that can cover it up or hide it away. The conscious effort not to fall apart in the women's restroom outside the Senate Chambers, takes all of the energy she has. She has to see this through, has to end this.

She has to make it mean something.

"Pam?" Martin calls through the wooden door. True to his word, he hasn't left her side. "May I come in?"

She doesn't answer, he enters regardless. It would take more anger to chastise him than she has energy to summon. "Are they ready for me?"

"They are." His expression is serious, thoughtful, and she'd really love to tell him where to shove his hypocritical sympathy. "I just got the call. Agent Cronin is out of surgery. The prognosis is optimistic."

If she opens her mouth or attempts to speak, she'll break into pieces. Instead, she remains silent. Smoothing her suit jacket needlessly, she turns away from the mirror and takes slow, measured steps out of the restroom. Everything around her is blurred. Two FBI agents escort her, earpieces chattering and guns at the ready. Martin is there, falling gently guiding her to the chair before falling back to his seat. She'll face the oversight committee alone.

The stack of files on the table is familiar. She reaches for the top document, the Blackbriar Operations Manual, as she sits down.

"Good morning, Senators. If I may, I'd like to begin by making a statement. For the record."


	9. Chapter 9

Carla Cronin met Pamela Landy once.

She remembers a tailored suit and never a blonde hair out of place. She remembers a voice that could command an army or, given the right words, cut like a knife. She remembers night after night of Tom coming home, half terrified and half in awe of his new boss, and then watching that terror forged into unshakable loyalty. There is a part of her husband that will never be hers, that will always belong to the United States and to Pamela Landy.

After coming home from Berlin, he smiled less often and there was a new sadness in his voice he said her name – _Pam_. He couldn't speak of it, couldn't tell her what it was that had him staring out the living room window well into the night; watching, waiting for something out there in the darkness to find him. That's when the fighting started.

She believes with all her heart that he knew this was coming.

"Mary promised to draw you a picture. For when you come home," she tells him instead of screaming or crying that he knew - _he knew_ \- and couldn't walk away. Because Pam needed him.

Only the beat of the heart monitor answers her; the steady, mechanical rhythm that jars her teeth with every piercing tone. He's still here, his hand unresponsive in hers, but here and still alive. The bandages over his chest and shoulder look strange, protruding from the hospital gown along with all the wires and tubes and everything else that is stitched and stuck into him.

She turns on the television to fill the silence and hopefully quiet the bleating machine next to the bed. The chatter of TV anchors, of sitcom families with their laugh tracks, and the dizzying pace of commercials now seems comfortingly normal. It's only noise to her; to her tired ears and overwhelmed mind the actors sound as though they're speaking a foreign language. Gibberish and snippets of music tumble out of the television as an odd, senseless balm to the harsh reality of the room. The truth is the same, her husband is trapped in a coma, fighting for his life as his body attempts to repair the damage, but it seems to lessen under the glare of unreality.

Murmuring voices waft under the solid door; she can see the shadows of feet moving in the hallway. There's a twenty-four hour guard outside. They've reassured her that it's merely a formality but she knows better. She can see the seriousness in their faces and hear it in their voices.

The handle clicks as the door opens, swinging inward just enough to allow Pamela Landy to enter the room. She closes it behind her and moves to the foot of the hospital bed; she's wearing yet another perfectly tailored suit.

"The doctors are optimistic. He did well in the surgery," she says, her clear voice sounds almost strong enough to demand God himself to take Tom's case.

Carla smiles instead of speaking, not trusting her voice or the rocky road her emotions seem hellbent on riding. She motions to the second chair, a gesture she hopes is welcoming. It's all she can manage here in this sterile room that smells of antiseptic and death. She wishes for an ounce of Pamela's composure; tears washed all of her mascara away hours ago, her eyes still raw and painful from crying. But Pamela, in her perfect suit with her perfect hair, is a beautiful statue carved from pale marble, unmarred by human weakness.

"Is there anything I can do for you? Whatever you need, I'll make it happen."

She's half tempted to ask for her husband back; for his heart and his devotion, two things that have been lost to her. Instead, she shakes her head. "Mary is with my mother, they think she'll be safe there. They have men watching the house. Just in case. And…and the doctors think he'll pull through." Her voice wavers just a little, threatening to collapse again.

A cell phone trills loudly. Pamela looks apologetic as she pulls her phone out of her purse and presses it against her ear. "Pamela Landy. Martin…what? No. No, that's not acceptable."

Carla sits still as she leaves, promising quietly to return, and tries to force her attention back to the television. But her mind can't quite let well enough alone. The phone call is part of that world, part of that life; it's part of the reason Tom is lying in a hospital bed and, for the first time in her married life, she wants to know why. She wants to know what was so important, what he believed was worth his very life. She wants to understand.

As quietly as possible, she leaves the chair and the incessant beeping behind. She slides off her pumps, her bare feet silent against the tile floor. The door is open just enough to look through and just enough to hear bits and pieces of the conversation going on outside the room.

"He won't come back, Marty. There's no point in offering him…you're not listening to me."

Carla pulls back as Pamela pivots toward the gap in the doorway. She presses herself against the wall, holding her breath as she strains to hear the conversation.

"I have proof that Blackbriar exists, they don't need Jason Bourne as proof," Pamela snaps into the phone irritably. "He's not a laboratory experiment, Marty. Either the CIA agrees to leave him alone or there's no deal." She tilts her head, listening intently.

The change is subtle. Carla watches as Pamela's knuckles tighten on the phone and a deep, angry red seeps into her cheeks and neck.

"Do not try to twist this around, Marty. Bringing David in will not change what happened to Tom. Don't patronize me by pretending it will. They have everything they need to go after the man responsible-" she stops, cut off by the man she's speaking to. That only seems to make her angrier. Her heels click against the tile floor as she paces furiously in front of the hospital door. "Tell Homeland Security they can come down here themselves and talk to Tom's wife about sacrifice. Maybe they can explain why she's sitting next to her comatose husband."

Carla pulls away from the door. She doesn't need to be that close to hear anymore, Pamela is nearly shouting into the phone.

"No, I didn't threaten him. He'll know when I'm making threats…because it will involve giving Jason Bourne his home address, that's why." The phone shuts with a loud snap.

Retreating to her chair, she folds her hands in her lap to hide the fact that they're shaking and waits for Pamela to return. She's perfected the smile that means everything is fine. She uses it when the neighbors ask her about her husband's career, when her parents ask her if he's spending enough time with Mary. It gives her a focus, a way to pretend that everything is fine.

The smile on Pamela's face when she reenters the room is nearly a mirror image of that same smile.

"I'm sorry about that, Carla," she says as she settles back into the chair. Her expression is carefully guarded, legs crossed elegantly at the ankles. Everything about her is perfect and distant and cold.

As her smile fades, Carla notices what looks like an imperfection. It could be the poor lighting of the room. Unable to help herself, transfixed by the idea that Pamela might not be perfect, she stares at what looks like a barely concealed bruise at the corner of her lips. Noticing the stare, Pamela reaches up to touch her lower lip, wincing as though it hurts.

"Did you…did that happen last night?" Carla asks.

Pamela shakes her head, her hand falling to her throat protectively. "It's nothing to worry about."

"That's what Tom always tells me." She tries to smile, tries to do anything but stare. "That's what he told me when they came to take Mary and me to a safehouse. He had to stay, but it was nothing to worry about. It never is." Her voice cracks dangerously again. Pamela says nothing, remaining perfectly still in her chair. "Why are you here?"

"Because I care about Tom. And about you," she answers evenly. "If you'd prefer to be alone-"

"Don't be so reasonable. It's easier to blame you for what happened if you aren't reasonable." Carla pulls further back into her chair, torn between despair and anger. Neither of them will help Tom or Mary or even herself, but she's still stuck at the crossroads between them. "Tom never told me why. Why the Justice Department has been treating him like a criminal, why there were men parked across the street. It was nothing to worry about, he said. And then that man came, asking questions about where you were. After he left, I could tell Tom was afraid. For the first time, he was afraid. Not for him, for you."

"What man, Carla?"

"There was something about him. Something wrong. The way he smiled. And he had this scar." She shivers at the memory of the man standing on the front porch, grinning like a wolf, and asking so very politely to speak with her husband.

"Was the scar on the left side of his face?"

"I think so." She hesitates, not knowing the right action to take. Pamela is back, Tom is fighting for his life; what could she possibly do now that could make a difference?

Deciding to trust Tom and praying that it won't result in more bloodshed, she reaches for the overnight bag she packed when she was forced to abandon her home. "The man left a file folder. I saw it on the coffee table. I know Tom took it into the study; he spent nearly an hour pouring over it. But he didn't give it to the men from the Justice Department when they came. He…he lied to them. I was afraid they'd search the house after we left." The folder feels like a coiled snake to the touch, ready to strike and bite her. She holds onto it for a moment, wondering what Tom will say when he finds out. "He only has one hiding place and he doesn't know that I know about it."

Pamela reaches out to take the folder. "You're doing the right thing in giving it to me."

"Tom isn't going to be in trouble, is he? For not handing it over."

"I trust Tom with my life, Carla. I'm sure he had a good reason."

"I...I looked inside," she admits, too exhausted to feel guilty about whatever state secrets she might have accidentally gleaned from her quick glance through the file. "I don't know what any of it means, but I recognized one of the men in the photograph. The man on the left, only he didn't have the scar when it was taken."

Reassured, if only slightly, she tries to take deep breaths and relax. She has to stay positive and keep a firm grip on the hope that everything will work out. That Tom will find a way to heal and to come back to her. She can hear the sound of paper rustling as Pamela opens the folder, but none of that is her concern any longer. Reaching out to lace her fingers through Tom's, she leans her head against the side of the hospital bed. She's not surprised when Pamela gets up and leaves the room, her heels clapping loudly.

Her voice is clear and firm as she speaks to the guard outside the door. "I want security on this room doubled. Now. No one is allowed in this room without clearance, not even the President himself. Are we clear?"

Carla tightens her grip on Tom's hand, closes her eyes, and prays harder than she has ever prayed in her life for this nightmare to end.

**

Ice sounds against the sides of the glass with dulcet, liquid tones. Ezra Kramer swirls the glass in easy circles, mixing up the ice water and scotch before swallowing it down in one gulp. It's earlier than usual for him to begin drinking but, given the day he's had, he decides there's no point in worrying about what time it is.

His career is over. Pamela Landy, unfortunately still among the living, made sure of it. All that's left is to clear his personal effects out of the office, if they'll even let him do that. The nattering old ladies on Capitol Hill have already started talking about jail terms and corruption probes. A rookie Senator could make his political career on a scandal like this, if he can manage to convince the folks back home that he's the virtuous knight riding in to clean up Washington.

He bristles automatically at the term _scandal_ , as if he was attempting to cover up a tryst with a call girl. As though he'd been caught red handed by the cowards and fools who are unable to see the ugly reality.

"Want another round? I'm buying." Reynolds' voice and sudden appearance in the doorway of his office should surprise him, but it doesn't.

He sets the glass, only melting ice remaining, down on his desk. "You let me down, Delta. You really fucked this one up."

Reynolds smiles - _damn infuriating smile_ \- and leaves the doorway. He picks up the bottle of Scotch from the table on his way across the room, spinning off the cap with slow turns. Silent, he moves to the desk and very deliberately picks up the empty glass. He pours another liberal dose of the Scotch before setting it back down in front of Kramer.

"Maybe they were right about you all along. Crazy. Completely crazy." Kramer snatches up the tumbler, swallowing down another mouthful. "What the hell happened? After all these years, you've never let me down."

"Not as young as I used to be," is Reynolds' only answer. He settles into a chair, completely unruffled by his monumental failure.

"It's over. It was over the moment Landy stepped into that room." More Scotch burns its way down his throat and he's beginning to feel the alcohol loosening up the knots inside. "It was a simple job. Find her and take care of her. Or at least bring me something I could use against her."

Reynolds shakes his head slowly. "Nothing to find. She's the real deal, Ez. She's a believer. Can't intimidate someone like that. Can't blackmail, can't threaten. It wouldn't have mattered what dirt I brought you, it wouldn't have stopped her."

"Then you should have put a bullet through her meddling skull. But you missed. And you shot Knowles, for god's sake. My own man!" Peering over the rim of his glass, he wipes at the sweat beading on his forehead and loosens his tie. "You've never missed a shot in your life."

"Her man got in the way."

"I don't believe you." As he says it, he realizes that it's the truth. In his alcohol soaked brain, he's beginning to see the pieces with a different perspective and they simply don't add up. "Come to think of it, you botched the job at CRI too. Your team got rid of the wrong goddamn files. They can't even prove that Bourne was in the fucking building, but every bit of Blackbriar was right there for them to find."

His head tips to the side, chin resting on his hand as though this were a casual conversation. "What would it take for you to just walk away? Turn your back on all of this."

"What are you talking about?" He pulls at his tie again, wondering why he's suddenly sweating profusely. Damn Scotch. "I've worked my whole life for this job."

"So did Landy. But she walked away. Had to have been important to her to give it all up."

He never would have expected Reynolds to wax philosophical. For a man who never believed in anything or anyone but himself, the questioning of Landy's motives is strikingly out of character. "Have you lost your fucking mind?"

"There's a possibility."

"It doesn't matter why. It doesn't matter what bullshit ideals she has," he coughs against an increasing tightness in his chest. His fingertips are beginning to tingle. He sets the glass aside, hand shaking badly enough to rattle what's left of the ice cubes. Something isn't right. He looks at the bottle of Scotch, the alarm bells in his head telling him that he's missed something important. The bottle, the glass, Reynolds pouring the drink; he looks down at the nearly empty glass in his hand and blinks as it blurs into multiple copies.

_It can't be true._

The tightness in his chest is nearly unbearable and shooting pains lance up his left arm into his shoulder. He can barely see Reynolds, his vision blurred and beginning to fade around the edges. The glass tumbles from his fingers, striking the top of his desk and dumping the remaining ice onto its surface. He grips the edge of the desk, pulling himself to his feet. He doesn't understand.

"Why?" he gasps, grabbing uselessly at the pain in his arm. The last image he sees before death takes him is Reynolds sitting in the chair, forever silent and inscrutable.

**

"Sir?" The young Homeland Security officer - _what was his name again?_ \- breaks Martin Marshall's concentration. "There's a Pamela Landy here for you, sir. She's not cleared for this."

"Let her through," Marshall answers wearily.

"Sir?"

"Save yourself the lashing you'll get otherwise and just let her through." He's already been at the wrong end of Pamela's temper more than once in the still-young day and he has no desire to be there again. Adjusting the fit of his latex gloves, he moves around to the other side of the desk to get a different perspective on the scene. "What brings you here, Pam?"

"Is it true?" Her face is ashen.

"It is. They'll be doing a full autopsy." He motions to the bottle of Scotch and the tipped glass. "Officially, this is a homicide until proven otherwise. The list of people who would want to murder Ezra Kramer isn't exactly small. They've already processed this area of the room, but they asked us not to touch or remove anything unless it pertains to national security."

She moves deliberately, sweeping her gaze from side to side as she takes in the scene around her. "Poison?"

"Possibly. It could've been in the alcohol. That's the running theory. He kept a bottle in a concealed panel in the bookshelf."

"What did you used to keep there?" she asks absently.

"Snickers bars."

She ignores the joke; her gaze now on the desk and the bottle. Lines deepen in her brow as she examines each piece of paper and each object. "You've got your deal."

He's not sure he heard her correctly. "What?"

"I can bring David in. We'll make the offer and see what he thinks."

"You said he wouldn't take it."

She doesn't answer; there's something unusual and frightening in the way she examines the room around her. She seems spooked and preoccupied. Pausing, she glances between Marshall and the doorway. "I didn't realize Homeland Security had this level of clearance."

"I wouldn't know-"

"The Director of the CIA might have been murdered in his own office and they let you in here out of the goodness of their hearts?" She fixes him with an icy, accusing glare. "The man at the door should've thrown me out, but you told him not to. You and I both know what that means. Level with me, Marty. Tell me what's really going on."

He's almost tempted to lay it all out on the table and unload some of the heavy secrets weighing on his shoulders. At least one of them has intersected with her life and her fate to a degree that he could be convinced she might have the right, or at least the need, to know.

"Tell me about Medusa."

The gleam in her eye means that she saw his surprise before he could erase the expression from his face. How the hell she knows about Medusa, he doesn't even want to guess. He weighs his options, searching for the one with the least amount of potential damage, and finally decides on the most direct course of action. "You'll want to talk to Albert Hirsch. I can arrange the meeting. You'll want to ask him about Delta."

"Make the call," she says, her voice hard and unforgiving.

"And Bourne?"

She hesitates, just for a moment and the struggle on her face is almost imperceptible. "I'll give you his location. But only you." Reaching into her purse, she pulls out a carefully folded piece of notepaper and holds it out.

It's a complete turnabout from her earlier position and the Pamela Landy he knows does not reverse her stance on a whim. He takes the piece of paper gingerly, wary of the change behind her reversal. Only hours earlier, she was fighting tooth and nail to keep David Webb out of their custody and now she's handing over his location in exchange for ancient history, for a scandal long dead and buried in the jungles of Vietnam.

The answer is undoubtedly lying in a hospital bed with a bullet hole in his chest, but exactly how she's stumbled onto that connection is a mystery.

"If he takes the deal, bring him in. If he doesn't, try not to get yourself killed." She adjusts the strap of her purse over her shoulder as she turns to leave, the expression on her face one of absolute determination. "Tell Hirsch I'm coming to talk to him."

He waits to unfold the piece of paper, pulling absently at the rolled cap of the latex glove around his wrist, until the door has closed behind her and the staccato echo of her heels has faded away. When he peels open the notepaper, he finds hastily scrawled directions and a crudely sketched map. It's north, toward the Canadian Border, in what appears to be rural New York. He wonders what her connection to the location is, since he's been through every inch of her life with a fine toothed comb and found none of her secrets. The Pamela Landy that exists outside of the CIA is a complete stranger to him.

"Sir?" the young officer asks. He's only been with the Department for a month and is still finding his procedural legs.

"Have someone meet Deputy Director Landy at the door and take her to the facility." He tucks the paper into his coat pocket and strips off the latex gloves on his way out of the room. "I want you to come with me. Let's go for a drive."

**

"Dr. Hirsch."

Albert Hirsch takes note of his visitor's tone of voice - _bitter contempt_ \- and the unforgiving crispness of her appearance. She's beautiful in an unusual way; high cheekbones, delicately built but almost fierce in her appearance. Blond hair has been ironed into straight lines, but he can see hints of spirit not quite dampened and her blue eyes flash as she speaks. She can't quite hide the intensity of her eyes; they give away the anger she's managing to keep tightly under control.

"Tell me about the men in this picture." She places a glossy black and white onto the bare table.

He sits slowly, awkwardly, with his wrists and ankles bound by restraints, and peers at the photograph over the rims of his bifocals. The picture brings back a horde of memories from long ago; voices swapping jokes, gunfire, the smell of napalm. "Where did you get this?"

"I'm asking the questions here. This is Ezra Kramer." She points to the man in the center of the photograph. "Who are the men beside him?"

"It's been a long time since I've seen that face." Carefully, he reaches out to touch the corner of the photograph. "On the right is Jason Bourne."

"The real Jason Bourne. Why was that name given to David Webb when he was inducted into Treadstone?"

It's the way she says his name - _David_ \- that gives her away and suddenly he knows exactly who she is. _Pamela Landy._ Unable to stop himself from smiling, he leans back against the rest of the chair and settles into a more comfortable position. "How much does he remember?"

Her face remains impassive, only her eyes betraying the emotions behind the mask. "Who was Jason Bourne, the Jason Bourne in the photograph?"

"A man. A monster." Sighing heavily, he turns his attention back to the picture. "I believe he was from Australia originally. Recruited into the Medusa Project because he already had the contacts they needed in the area. Drugs, slavery, prostitution; he had a hand in anything that would turn a profit. Reckless, arrogant, vicious. He was the perfect fit."

"The perfect fit for what? What was Medusa?"

The words don't come easily. He's spent decades not speaking of those years, not thinking of all those secrets. They were long done, long gone. "A death squad. They were meant to target members of the Viet Cong. More often than not, they simply killed anyone who got in their way. Bourne betrayed them; he was feeding information to the Viet Cong in exchange for help trafficking what he could out of the country." He drops his gaze to the photograph again, looking over the faces. It seems a lifetime ago; they all seem so young. So very very young.

"And this man?" her voice wavers ever so slightly.

"He led Medusa. Delta is the name I knew him by then. I don't know what name he used before the war."

"What about after?"

"After…he had many names." The memories are dusty, covered over by the haze of time passed. "One of them was Jason Bourne. After he eliminated Bourne, we saw an opportunity. He took the name, the identity, and used to it to lure one of our enemies out of the shadows. Ilich Ramirez Sanchez."

"The terrorist? Carlos the Jackal?" She sounds surprised.

"As Bourne, Delta created the ultimate competition for Carlos. Kill for kill, for years they were cat and mouse across the globe. It was a game to him."

"Sanchez was arrested over a decade ago. What did he do then?"

"He retired."

Her eyes narrow and the set of her jaw tightens. "He recruited David Webb into Treadstone. That doesn't sound like he moved to Florida and took up Bingo." When he doesn't respond, she keeps going. "How did he get the scar? He has a scar on the left side of his face. It must be very distinctive because it seems to be the one thing people remember about him."

It's his turn to wonder about her. _His bright eyed Athena_. "I believe it was a knife that made that scar. Some targets do not go gently into that dark night."

"And you reused the identity of Jason Bourne when you started Treadstone. Why? If the name was so well known, after all those years chasing Carlos, wouldn't that risk exposure?"

"You misunderstand. David wasn't given the name Jason Bourne on a whim. He was Delta's choice. His successor, his heir to the identity."

"He fit the profile," she says with surprising bitterness.

He smiles, intrigued by her passion. "Yes, David was everything we needed. A prodigy with languages and a perfect shot; two of the things we can't create in a laboratory. And he's the reason you're here."

"I am here because of this man," she says evenly, enunciating every syllable, and pointing to Delta in the photograph. "Tell me how to find him."

He puzzles over her demand, over her fury, and can't help but wonder. She's a beautiful, exotic puzzle the calls out to him as a challenge that must be met. The restraints keep him from reaching out and touching her face - _beautiful_ \- and searching out what lies beneath that luminous pale skin. He wants to dig deeper and discover what drives her; what makes her so sharp around the edges and so obsessed that every line in her tailored suit is absolutely perfect. "I will tell you what I know…if you tell me about David."

"You know more than I do," she counters smoothly.

"You spent hours reading his file, staring at his photograph. You came to feel that you knew him." Lifting his head, he adjusts the angle of his gaze until she is as clear as his eyeglasses can make her. She raises her hand to her throat protectively and too quickly. Her eyes can't quite disguise the fear. She's hiding something. "The bruise," he gestures to his own chin. "You've tried to conceal it. It was David who hit you, wasn't it? Are there more? I see the way you're covering your neck."

She lowers her hand, placing her palms flat against the table and meeting his gaze directly. "Tell me how to find Delta."

He leans forward, studying her face. "You're not afraid of him. Were you? Just for a moment. His hands around your neck…wondering if he would do what he's been trained to do. What he does so very well. What he is. Were you afraid?" A subtle blush has crept into her pale skin but he can't be certain if it's anger or something more interesting.

"Let me make myself perfectly clear, Dr. Hirsch. I will find this man and when I do, I will destroy him and anyone who tries to protect him."

Her fury is too great to be anything but personal and that intrigues him even further. "Bring me David Webb and I will tell you how to find Delta."

"This conversation is over." The photograph is pulled away from his grasp up and disappears into her satchel as she stands up. "Your lawyer knows how to contact me if you change your mind." Blond hair falls across her face like a silk curtain, hiding the rouge in her cheeks as she turns away and starts toward the door.

"Love," he says just as she's reaching for the doorknob.

She looks back sharply, the unexplainable fear sparkling in her eyes once again. "What did you say?"

"Your hunt for Delta, the hunger for revenge. Because he chose David to become Jason Bourne, because he brought David to us. It only makes sense if you love him. That's why you saved his life. It's why you weren't afraid, why you've forgiven him for the bruises you're trying so hard to hide."

"You don't know anything about me," she snaps coldly.

The door swings shut behind her and leaves him once again in the sterile, uninteresting prison. He savors the memory. The blush of her rage, the white in her knuckles as she gripped the strap of her purse. So elegantly ferocious; she reminds him of a tigress on the prowl, seeking out the foolish men with guns who thought themselves the predators. To have her in his grasp, to be able to experiment and test and dig under her skin until he _understood_ , is a heady dream.

She will find Delta one way or another and he envies that inevitability.


	10. Chapter 10

Detective Eva Morales nods toward the combat ready Marines standing in the hallway of Mercy General. "What's with the uniforms?"

"Must be someone important," her partner answers dispassionately. Detective Sean Carson may be one of NYPD's finest, but he's notorious for wearing blinders that block out everything beyond the case he's working on.

Eva shakes her head; she's been at this job too long to ignore her instincts. "You don't think it's unusual to have the G.I. Joe twins hanging around?"

"We'll ask on the way out. Come on. Let's see if our John Doe has any idea who tried to kill him." He leads the way down the hall toward the opposite end of the Intensive Care Unit and their destination. She nods hello to one of the nurses; they've been here often enough that the staff recognizes them.

When she thinks about that, it makes her question her career choice. Mostly, she doesn't think about it. She thinks about the John Doe in room four hundred and fifty one. She thinks about the breathing tube stuck down his throat and the scar in his chest where the doctor dug out the bullet. He's not exactly hard on the eyes either. Dark, definitely mixed ethnicity; his hair curls tight over his head and the stubble on his face is turning into a thick beard.

"Hey there," she greets him as they enter the room. She shrugs off her coat before approaching the side of the bed.

It'll be weeks before he can eat and breathe without help, but the lucky bastard will survive. A millimeter lower and the bullet would have exploded his heart, killing him instantly. It's a miracle he's even alive. She's hoping the miracle will hold long enough for her to get the name of whoever tried to kill him.

"Detective Eva Morales, this is Detective Carson." She holds up her badge where he can see. "Doc says you won't be talking much for a few more weeks but we'd like to catch the person who put you here. Think you can help us?"

Ever so slightly, he shakes his head.

"You sure about that? Cause I like catching bad guys."

Again, he shakes his head. His index fingers rises and falls slowly, giving an indication that he's attempting to communicate.

"How about one for no and two for yes?" She imitates the motion with her own finger before digging into her back pocket for a notebook and pen. "A? B?" It's an agonizingly slow progress but eventually she has eleven letters on her notepad and, put together, they form a name. "Pamela Landy?"

He nods almost imperceptibly, closing his eyes as those he's fallen back into sleep.

"Did she shoot you?"

He raises his finger once. _No._

"Does she know who did?"

_No._

"But she's important. We need to talk to her. Is that it?" She figures this Pamela woman is a girlfriend or something.

Twice. _Yes._

She bites back a heavy sigh and the temptation to roll her eyes. "Well, there can't be more than a few hundred Pamela Landys in the phone book. Guess we should get started."

_No._

"Alright. What else do I need to know?" She runs through the alphabet almost three more times. Luckily, the last cycle stops with A. "C.I.A?"

_Yes._

"Holy shit. I knew that name sounded familiar," Carson breathes. "It's been all over the goddamn news. She's the Deputy Director who disappeared. She testified at the Senate hearing yesterday morning, blew the whole thing wide open. Jesus Christ."

"Watch your mouth," she chastises him dryly before turning back to their nameless gunshot victim. "How about you? You got a name? We've been calling you John Doe down at the station." It takes an agonizingly long time, cycling through the alphabet again and again as she watches for the slightest move of his index finger.

_Jacob Pazinski._

**

"Are we sure this is the right place, sir? It looks deserted," the young, fresh-faced officer asks. His name is Ken White and Marshall heard his entire life story on their way to Bourne's location.

Considering the fact that their destination is a hunting cabin in the middle of nowhere, the history of Ken White might be the most valuable information he's managed to gather on this trip. He doesn't have an answer to the question, not quite ready to speculate on whether or not Landy deliberately sent him on a wild goose chase. There are plenty of other daunting questions to keep him occupied while the tactical team crosses the quarter mile to the hunting cabin on foot.

He shifts in the uncomfortable car seat, trying to balance the reports that seem to multiply exponentially every time he turns his back. The information contained in the pages makes his blood curdle, but there's little else to do in the surveillance vehicle but wait.

_Suicide._

Of all the things he knew Ezra Kramer to have been, coward is not one of them. Ruthless, arrogant, even traitorous, yes, but he can't imagine the man he knew taking his own life. It's all there in coroner's report; no evidence of foul play. By all accounts, Kramer was alone in his office when he died. The surveillance video reaffirms this, the card readers on the secure doors confirm it. Even with the mounting evidence, he doesn't believe it.

He doesn't believe, even for a moment, that the mushrooming scandal drove Kramer to suicide. Regardless of the proof that it was Kramer himself who had orchestrated the attempt to pin Blackbriar on Pamela Landy, leading to the tampering of the mainframe at CRI. The paper trail being uncovered by the Justice Department is damning, leveling unquestionable fingers at Kramer and Vosen. A parallel, but quieter, investigation by Homeland Security is finding a shocking level of corruption and dubious use of power that would have destroyed Kramer.

_There's too much._

Kramer was never stupid. He would never have allowed a hint of documentation of any misdoing to exist, let alone reams of paper delineating his control over the creation and function of Blackbriar. His signature is right there; the authorization for the behavior conditioning and for the use of experimental pharmaceuticals, including the names and sums of money he was paid by upper level management of the companies who provided the drugs.

Unable to put his finger on the nagging suspicion that the treasure trove of documents being unearthed by the Justice Department is too good to be true; he's left to sift through the reports and form his own, troubled opinions. The loss of data and surveillance video at CRI is too convenient. The window of time where the system was backing up and lost precious seconds of video outside Kramer's office, the perfect set of prints on the glass even though it had obviously fallen from his hand; all of it is so frustratingly circumstantial. He has no concrete proof that the evidence has been staged to present a deliberate picture of Kramer's involvement.

He can't even begin to fathom who would have the access and clearance it would take to either collect or fabricate this kind of evidence. And all of it, every single bit of remaining evidence, puts Landy completely in the clear. Even the asset who was sent to kill Landy - _ordered by Vosen himself_ \- has disappeared off of the face of the earth.

The order to kill both Pamela and Tom Cronin at the rendezvous came from Kramer, they've even found proof of that in the seemingly bottomless pile of evidence. They haven't found the shooter. Every inch of Grand Central was searched, every exit shut down and every single human being inside searched to the edge of his legal ability. Nothing. He can't hunt down a ghost and bring it in for questioning.

"Sir?" White asks hesitantly. "Something wrong?"

"Of all the conspiracy theories out there," he begins, speaking more to fill the silence than convey information. "There are half a dozen names for the same idea; that an organization, vast and powerful, exists beneath the surface of government. Beyond law, beyond anything but power and the will to wield it. Call it the Illuminati or the New World Order, whatever you like." He leaves Blackbriar off of the list. The surveillance vehicle falls silent and he becomes acutely aware that the members of the team are watching him uneasily.

"Sir?"

"There are crazy ideas out there, White. And even crazier people who believe those ideas. Take the doomsday nuts for example, building bunkers or cabins out in the middle of nowhere and waiting for the nuclear holocaust. Crazy." He can almost feel the relief of the other men in the enclosed space.

"Ground team is approaching, sir," a voice in the back speaks up.

Marshall turns his attention to the monitor, watching through the unsteady hand view as one of the team approaches the front steps leading up to the porch. This is the moment of truth. Will Bourne be there? Or will he have vanished like every other tantalizing piece of real evidence?

"The door's unlocked." The voice of the Team Leader is riddled with static, obscuring the sound of the door swinging open; their first glimpse inside the cabin. The room appears to be a kitchen, the appliances easily recognizable. "There's something, sir. It appears to be a body. Male, Caucasian."

He catches sight of a human form as camera pans shakily over the scene but the face of the man is turned away, his identity concealed. "Tell them to investigate. Find out who that is and if they're alive."

"Yes, sir."

The Team Leader moves forward cautiously, each step jarring the camera's vision only slightly. A dark pool of liquid spreading over the floor comes into view, the familiar dark shape of a handgun lies beside the fallen man. Even before the video camera moves closer, the hand carrying it reaching out to roll the man onto his back, Marshall knows they won't be able to confirm that it's Bourne.

"Looks like a shotgun blast to the face, sir."

Marshall manages to keep the frustration out of his voice. "We'll have to bag him and bring him in for ID confirmation.

"Yes, sir." The camera jostles and blurs with static for a moment. "Wait. There's something. Some kind of device."

"Give us a visual, Team Leader."

"Fall back!" The picture returns, swaying wildly back and forth as the Team Leader races toward the front door.

The screen goes blank mere seconds before they hear the roar of the explosion and the surveillance van is rocked by the shockwave. Scrambling out of the vehicle, Marshall is riveted by the column of smoke and fire piling up into the sky. He knows immediately that there will be nothing left of the cabin but a blackened crater; bits of debris are already raining down as close as twenty feet away. Lives lost and nothing to show for it. No evidence, no proof, and no Bourne.

_Nothing but ghosts._

**

The hospital is the only place Pamela can think to go. The only place where she won't be alone, facing everything that has gone so very wrong. Best laid plans, a best laid life; all of it torn asunder in less than twenty-four hours. She couldn't bring herself to get rid of the flannel shirt. Not yet. Sitting on the chair outside Tom's hospital door, it's all she can do just to breathe. On her lap is the classified archive file that ruined everything. She can't force her fingers to let go of it.

"Ma'am?"

"Yes?" She looks up, trying to focus on the young Marine standing beside Tom's door.

"Your phone is ringing, ma'am."

"Oh. Thank you." Her fingers are heavy and clumsy as she pulls it from her purse. Even her own name sticks in her throat. "Pamela Landy."

"Pam, there's nothing left. There was an explosion. It's all gone. He's gone."

It's not a surprise - _she knew the second she saw his face in the photograph_ \- but it still hits her like a blow. She forces herself to take several long, deep breaths before responding. "I'm sorry, Marty. I didn't…I wasn't sure."

"I'll be back in the city this afternoon. I'd like to talk. About where we go from here. Where you go from here."

"I'm at the hospital. I'm going to stay here awhile." She lets her hand fall to her lap, disconnecting the call without saying good-bye. Her work feels monumentally futile at this moment. She failed. She can't even bring herself to consider what will happen to Carla and Mary if Tom doesn't pull through.

It's all her fault.

The handle of the door clicks before it swings inward and Carla slips through the gap. Her hair is pulled into a tight ponytail and the dark circles under her eyes have settled in permanently. "Ms. Landy? I heard your voice. Why didn't you come in?"

"I didn't want to disturb you."

Carla looks almost too terrified to speak, wringing her hands together nervously. She's never seemed comfortable around Pamela. "I was going to go see Mary. I don't want to leave Tom alone, but…"

"I could stay with him," Pam offers softly.

She smiles, almost sympathetically. "Thank you." One of the Marines moves to follow her and she recoils from the escort, eying him with rebellious mistrust. She doesn't protest, however, apparently understanding the necessity and walks away with the young soldier half a step behind her.

Left to ensure Tom doesn't wake to an empty room - _if he wakes at all_ \- Pamela braces herself against the smell of antiseptic and disinfectant and the sight of Tom lying in the hospital bed with skin like white wax. The door closes behind her, shutting out the bustle of the hospital and the bright lights of the hallway. She takes the seat beside Tom and sits down gingerly, acutely aware that this seat belongs to Carla. She is the interloper.

"Hi, Tom," she says quietly. She sounds pathetic in the quiet, the beep of the heart monitor much louder than her voice. "The hearing went well. There will be more, of course."

Her mind is racing, trying to force order onto the chaos that life has given her and trying to find meaning in it all. She's always leaned on Tom, depended on him to keep her steady and moving forward. Now that he's silent, only the artificial beat of his heart to answer her, she's floundering. How can she even begin to explain? How can she make amends for the fact that he's lying in this bed because of her?

"Kramer's dead. The Coroner thinks it might have been suicide." She's attempting to stay calm and collected. Perhaps if she acts as though it's just another day and another debriefing, it will seem less artificial and cruel. He always knew what needed to be done, always understood what she was trying to tell him. "David…is dead. There was an explosion. I told him to stay there, that I would come back with an offer. He trusted me," her voice breaks and she has to stop, pressing her knuckles against her lips as though that could stop what she needs to tell him from being true.

"Carla gave me the file." She looks down at the folder, wondering how something so small can do so much damage. The edges have curled from being stuffed into her purse, but she doesn't dare let it out of her possession. Gently, she lays the file open against his side. It's close enough that he could reach out and touch the pages; that he could see what she sees. "It turns out the real Jason Bourne was a piece of work. Not much of a surprise, I suppose. They used his name for a reason."

Her fingers shake as she brushes over the photograph, seeing and not seeing the end of her whole world right there in black and white. Everything she knows, everything she believes is rendered useless by this photograph.

Her entire life.

"The man on the left…I don't know what name you know him by. Hirsch knew him as Delta. He recruited David into Treadstone. David remembered the scar, just like Carla did." She can't force herself to voice her fears, that this man is the one who fired the bullet that tore through Tom. A bullet meant for her. She doesn't know which hurts more, that she was a target or that Tom was hit and she wasn't. "He's had a lot of names. He was even Jason Bourne for years."

Her vision blurs as her eyes fill with tears. She brushes them away impatiently, refusing to cry over this. Over him. Crying won't change the past; it won't bring David back or undo the damage keeping Tom locked in silence. Her hands are still shaking - _she can't stop shaking_ \- as she pulls the smaller photograph from her purse and lays it against the black and white photo. The image of the two pictures side by side will haunt her for the rest of her life.

"When I knew him…his name was Rick."

Saying the name destroys what is left of her self-control. All she can do is grab onto the blanket spread over Tom and try to breath through the tears pouring down her cheeks. David is gone, Tom is gone, and it's all her fault. She thought he would be safe; she thought it was the one place where Treadstone couldn't touch him. Instead, she led him to his death and put Tom in the line of fire along the way.

It still doesn't seem possible. It doesn't seem real. But there he is in both pictures and she knows that face almost better than she knows her own. Beautiful blue eyes, close-cropped brown hair with a mind of its own, and that crazy, crooked smile she had loved. All that's missing is the scar that seems to define him now and the neon sign above his head announcing that he was a liar and a murderer. How could she not have seen it? She'd been young and naïve, but can't believe she'd been so very wrong about him.

At the same time, it explains too much for her to deny it. The life that was perfect on paper but strangely void of human debris. An Ivy League education, his name listed with Doctors Without Borders - _the perfect cover for his real objectives_ \- but not so much as a traffic ticket or high school spelling bee prize with his name on it. If she'd dug deeper - _Tom would have known_ \- it would have been obvious that the entire identity was too carefully constructed to be real.

Every breath she takes seems to make the heartache more agonizing to bear. Guilty. The conversation with Albert Hirsch has been replaying in her head for hours; how he'd seen through her anger, through her grief, and known her pain for what it truly was.

He merely chose the wrong Jason Bourne.

"Please don't leave me," she whispers, reaching for Tom's hand and taking comfort in the way it fits against hers. "I can't do this without you."

**

Taste is the first sensation that returns; the copper tang of blood on his tongue. Wincing against the throbbing pain in his forehead, David - _Jason_ \- feels around him for anything that might be a threat. Cheap fabric, rough to the touch. Opening his eyes only introduces a series of blurry blobs of light into the equation. Stiff, aching, he sits up and immediately reaches for his head. The pain is sharp and intense, like a jackhammer pounding against his skull. After a while, it fades enough for him to pull his hands away and squint into the dim light.

_Where is he?_

He looks down, surprised to see that the comfortable sweats have been replaced with rugged cargo pants that are distinctly military and a plain brown t-shirt. Black combat boots are heavy but familiar. A brand new Tag Heuer watch is latched around his wrist, replacing the one he lost to the East River.

The room around him has no windows. There's a narrow bed, a nightstand with a utilitarian lamp, and two doors; one leading to a minimal bathroom and the other leading out of the room. He eases off of the bed, feeling each and every one of his still healing injuries as he moves. Fumbling for the light switch inside the bathroom, he winces against the sudden flood of fluorescent light.

A cracked, aging mirror reflects a stranger's face back to him. Dried blood at the spot where his nose meets his forehead forms a perfect imprint of the butt of a rifle. He turns the handle of the sink, waiting as the water splutters and coughs from cold to lukewarm. The hand towel has seen better days. He wets one corner and begins cleaning away the blood, ignoring the stinging of broken skin. The area around his left eye is turning a mottled purple, but other than the cut and the ugly bruise from the rifle, he can find no other fresh wounds. They wanted to take him alive.

_Why?_

Once the blood is washed away, he rinses the taste of it from his mouth before shutting off the water and returning to the bedroom. The door that must be the exit is locked, the knob refusing to turn when he tries it. He examines the edges, looking for a way past the lock, but the pain and nausea of wounds old and new force him back to the bed to catch his breath.

_Just for a minute._

The hands of the watch indicate it's late afternoon, but what day? Without windows, he has only his instincts to tell him how long he's been unconscious. His stomach growls a reminder that it's been too long between meals, but again, that only gives him minimal information about how much time has passed.

He doesn't know how they found him - _who found him?_ \- but they must've discovered Landy's location when she made contact or even followed her as she was returning to the cabin. The possibilities are grim; either scenario is a death sentence for Pamela. Because of him, because she tried to help him. Whether the nausea is from the blow to the head or from knowing what happens to those who try to help him, he can't be sure. No matter how many names and secrets he discovers, it doesn't change anything; no matter how many lives he takes or how many times he walks away.

_They've won._

He tenses when he sees the doorknob turn; ready to move, ready to defend himself against whatever comes through.

It's a face he's come to know from his nightmares, that ever-familiar scar making the man in front of him unforgettable. The man meets his gaze directly, unafraid, as he tosses a dark backpack onto the bed beside David. Intense blue eyes seem to bore into his skull and, for a moment, he seems about to speak but merely nods toward the backpack.

Puzzled, and slightly alarmed, David pulls open the zipper of the pack and digs into the contents. He finds a change of clothes, the deodorant and toothbrush Pamela purchased; there's a bank bag with cash, small bills mostly, and a sleek, dark blue passport. Inside is his face and his birthday, but not his name. Daniel Webster. As he flips through the pages, he sees that Daniel has never left the United States. Between the last page and the back cover, he finds the photograph. Marie.

"Why?" he manages to ask, his voice rough from prolonged silence.

The man moves to the wall, leaning back in a way that should be casual but doesn't quite manage to make him less threatening. "I have a team of men like you. Private sector. You've got a place on that team if you want. Or you can take that bag and disappear."

"I'm no longer Jason Bourne." It's automatic. It's become his mantra, his code.

"You'll never be anyone else. Doesn't matter what name I give you," the man answers cryptically. "Jason Bourne was a traitor and a drug dealer. I buried him in Vietnam long before you were born." He doesn't bother trying to conceal the hatred in his voice for this phantom, this real Jason Bourne.

"You brought me to Treadstone." He doesn't get a response, doesn't expect one, and waits until the silence becomes heavy before attempting another question. "Who are you?"

"I've had a hundred different names. All of them ghosts..." he trails off, the words disappearing before they can make sense.

"Why?" he asks again, searching for the angle, the trap. He's being offered his freedom, away from Treadstone and Blackbriar, but men like this - _like him_ \- don't act without reason, without motive. There's always an objective, always a target. "Why didn't you kill me?"

His crooked smile gives the impression of barely masked cruelty. "I still might."

There's a reason the man has kept him alive and given him a new chance at life; a reason and a price to pay. Whatever that hidden motive might be, he has no doubt his unexpected ally could just as quickly turn against him.

"You're free to go. And if you change your mind." He steps away from the wall as he reaches into his breast pocket. The business card is crisp and perfectly white. It falls onto the corner of the bed, the man never quite getting close enough to reach.

David reaches for the card. Emblazoned on the front is the inked image of a woman with writhing snakes emanating from her head. Medusa. There's phone number printed, almost invisibly, along the bottom of the card. It's a domestic number but he doesn't recognize the area code. When he looks up, the man has already returned to his place against the wall. "I don't understand."

"I cracked my skull on a job in South America. Columbia, 1977. Back then, I was Jason Bourne. I needed to lie low for a few months." He looks away, his gaze focused somewhere beyond the room. "Met this college girl working a summer job. I remember her eyes. You could see everything she was thinking, everything she wanted, everything she was afraid of. Right there in her eyes."

His first thought is Marie and the way her luminous eyes always drew him in. It's a piece of this puzzle that he can grab onto, that he can understand. A girl, a new life, peace; those are desires he understands. Then his brain latches onto the rest of the sentence - _I was Jason Bourne_ \- and spins furiously into motion. The feeling at the bottom of his stomach has turned decidedly unsettled. It's as though he's been given a glimpse into the future, into what he could have become if he hadn't shattered into pieces on Wombozi's yacht that night.

"You chose me," he says quietly. "To become you."

The silence is uneasy, taut with what remains unspoken and unanswered. Although freedom is being offered, the man's scrutiny is far from friendly and there's a vicious edge in his voice. His stance is deliberately casual as he waits, anticipating whatever move David might make. They've been pounded into the same mold, the same identity, and the bristling at being in the same room with the _other_ is palpable.

_You'll never be anyone else._

He doesn't know why he thought he could go back, but now he knows. Now he's seen what path lies ahead of him, what his face will look like in another five or fifteen years. Slowly, he returns the contents to the backpack, slipping the business card into the pocket before pulling the zipper closed. Standing takes conscious effort to bend each joint, to pull each segment of his body up onto the other and push away the feeling of weight and strain. The strap of the backpack feels comfortable and familiar against his shoulder.

The one person in the world who might understand what it means to leave Jason Bourne behind is standing in front of him.

He has to ask. "What happens now?

**Author's Note:**

> In my head, the character of Mark Reynolds (aka Rick) is played by Nathan Fillion. Hence the _Firefly_ references. I have fanart and everything. Because I am a sad little fangirl.


End file.
